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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

===2000s===

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

==Notes and references==

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

<references/>

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

==External links==

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

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

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

Main Page

2008-11-05T05:29:04Z

Bleakhaus: /* External Links */

[[Image:Campanile-v2.jpg|250px|thumb|right]]<big>'''Welcome to the ''Against the Day'' Wiki'''</big>

To become a contributor/editor, [http://pynchonwiki.com/mycaptcha/captcha-page.php '''Create an account.''']

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<div style="border:1px solid #6f463a; background:#f6efe8; width:320px; padding:8px; margin:0;">
'''''Paperback Pagination''' 
The UK paperback edition of ''Against the Day'' has a markedly different pagination from the original hardback editions it is 1220 pages, up from the original 1085 pages. The American paperback retains the original pagination. '''As all page references in this wiki are to the original edition, the UK paperback presents a challenge.'''

[[Pagination Blues|''Read more on the pagination and how to deal...'']]

'''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086671 Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki]. Feel free to add [[Oxford article comments | comments and corrections]].

'''Cricket anyone?''' Excellent article by Peter Vernon on cricket as metaphor in ''Against the Day'' [[Cricket in Against the Day|Read it...]]</div>

This is the Wiki for [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''Against the Day''.
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]], [[Against the Day Title|entertain some theories on the source of the title]], or check out the [[Errata]].

==How to Use this Wiki==

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.

Apart from those, it's up to you! In addition to your own research, feel free to add relevant information or interpetations gleaned from other ''Against the Day'' online discussions such as the [http://www.waste.org/pynchon-l/ Pynchon-L] mailing list, [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/ The Chumps of Choice] blog, [http://www.sporadikos-logos.org/against-the-day/ Against the Day blog], and others-- with proper attribution, of course.

==Alphabetical Index==
Information on the characters, events, and everything else in ''Against the Day'', organized alphabetically:{{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}

 

==Spoiler-free Annotations by Page==
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.
{{ATD PbP}}

== Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines==

[[Help:Contents|'''Click here for help with editing and creating pages.''']]

We have a few conventions we ask that you follow:

* 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.

* 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 <code><nowiki>[[Category:ATD]]</nowiki></code>.

* To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, create one using the [[T|entry on Peter Tait]] as an example. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg <nowiki>[[Name Discussion|DISCUSSION]]</nowiki>) and notice that the visible name will be "DISCUSSION" in full caps, so it stands out a bit.

* [[Help:Contents|More help for this wiki available here.]]

==External Links==

* [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Random House UK ATD Page]
* [http://www.hyperarts.com/thomas-pynchon/ ThomasPynchon.com]
* [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/ The Modern Word Pynchon page]
: [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/countingdown.html The Modern Word: counting down to ATD]
: [http://z11.invisionfree.com/thefictionalwoods/index.php The Fictional Woods] - a Pynchon forum
* [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ Pynchonoid Blog]
* [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/ ATD Blog]
* [http://researchmethodsprowrite.blogspot.com/ Another ATD Blog]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Day Wikipedia ATD page]
* [http://www.emanating.com/wordpress/ Emanating Against the Day]'''
* [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica]
* [http://www.vheissu.info/atdtda/monte-toc.php Extended ToC for ''Against the Day'']
* [http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/article/7889/the-fuss-about-pynchon/ The Fuss About Pynchon] - Great article by John Carvill in [http://www.popmatters.com/ PopMatters] about Pynchon's work.
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7470283.stm BBC: Tunguska at 100]
* [http://literarywiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page Literarywiki.org] - like Pynchonwiki, but for all other books. Founded by one of Pynchonwiki's early contributors.

==Featured Article==
[[Image:Lord_Hawke.jpg|150px|thumb|left]]

'''It’s Just Not Cricket: Cricket as Metaphor in Thomas Pynchon’s ''Against the Day''''' 

Peter Vernon presented this insightful paper at the Conference on ''Against the Day'' held in Tours, France, in June 2007, elucidating one of ''Against the Day'''s myriad vectors of meaning.
:"It is for two main reasons, I believe, that Pynchon uses the game of cricket as a metaphor in ''Against the Day''. First, because cricket is the Imperial game, a game exported by the British to its colonies. And, second, because cricket is a game of balance, doubles and mirror images. The off-break is exactly balanced by the leg-break; the googly by the doosra. Cricket operates in terms of mirror-images and can be seen, therefore, to connect, on a metaphorical level, with the themes of Double Refraction, the Michelson-Morley Experiment, Iceland Spar, the Zombinis and the Isle of Mirrors in Venice." ([[Cricket in Against the Day | Read on...]])
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

==Image Gallery==
Below are some of the images you will find on the ''Against the Day'' Wiki. {{Special:Newimages}}

ATD 26-56

2008-10-26T07:23:26Z

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

==Page 26==

'''egret plumes''' 
Some species of egrets were threatened with extinction in the 19th century because their plumes (also called ''aigrettes'') were much used in millinery. Problem is, the egrets grew the showy feathers only in breeding season, so that's when they were killed, hence no little egrets (egretlets?).

'''Little Egypt''' 
was the stage name for two popular exotic dancers, Ashea Wabe who danced at the Seeley banquet at the 1893 World's Fair and Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, also performing under the stage name Fatima, appeared at the "Street in Cairo" exhibition on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(dancer) Wikipedia entry] Also a 1961 [[Little_Egypt|song]] by the Coasters.

==Page 27==

'''Bacchanale''' 
From ''Samson et Dalila'', op. 47 (1877) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_and_Delilah_%28opera%29 Wikipedia entry]. Listen to a [http://themodernword.com/wiki/bacchanale.mp3 30 second MP3 sample]

"Bacchanalia" describes not just the music but the dance too, in this context.

'''from here to Timbuctoo''' 
Now known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu Timbuktu,] a standard figure of speech for the other end of Creation.

'''Maxim whirling machines...''' 
This paragraph describes a number of real flying apparati: [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Aero_Oct1893.html This article] from October 1893 describes the Maxim whirling machine and others.

'''ornithurgy''' 
Invented word?

My guess is that it signifies something like bird-works: 
ornith- variant of ornitho; [New Latin orntho-, from Greek, from orns, ornth-, bird;] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ornitho-] 
-urgy [New Latin -rgia, from Greek -ourgi, from -ourgos, working, from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/-urgy]

'''Dally''' 
Merle's relationship with Dally is reminiscent of Ryan and Tatum O'Neal's characters in the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film, "Paper Moon". Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 28==

'''''Imbottigliata!''''' Italian for "bottled".

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
The Lolita motif is common in Pynchon's works. Other Lolitas include Bianca in [[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow.'']

:Dahlia is four or five years old! She is not a Lolita motif here. Lolita was twelve and Humbert was sick.

::Too early in the novel to jump into such conclusions.

'''in Randolph's face a degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic''' 
Randolph "froze" previously, on page 12; evidently this is a trait already established in the ''Chums'' novels.

'''fulminate me if she ain't''' 
What an odd turn of phrase: set me off explosively.

'''this Trouvé-screw unit over here''' 
Gustave Trouvé built advanced machinery from the 1860s to the 1890s; [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Screws_May1892.html his work on airscrews] was pivotal, and he also invented [http://www.electricrecordteam.com/history.htm the outboard motor.] Before Trouvé's design studies, propulsion in the air used sail-rotors like windmills or depended on slightly modified marine propellers.

==Page 29==

'''Midway Plaisance''' 
The big central concourse of the White City. "Plaisance" is an alternative (or Frenchified) spelling of "pleasance," an esthetically appealing spot. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this very good site] on the Columbian Exposition, the Midway Plaisance lent its name to the midways of circuses ever after.

'''a l'étouffée''' 
French, meaning braised. So, braised alligator meat. Braised food, for instance crawfish, is a culinary specialty of New Orleans.

In the New Orleans context, a recipe is pertinent because "braise" doesn't exactly tell the story of this Cajun preparation. The following is drastically abridged from, of all things, the obituary of Joe Daole ("Joe Dale") in the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' April 21, 2007:
:Saute onion, green pepper, celery, parsley and garlic in a great deal of butter. Add peeled and chopped tomatoes and seasonings. Simmer, covered, 5-10 minutes. Make a dark brown roux with oil and flour; add to vegetables. Add seafood stock and bring to a boil. Add peeled shrimp or crawfish tail meat and cook just 2-3 minutes. Serve over rice.

'''Sloane Laboratory''' 
Yale's physics lab built 1882. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_33|page 33]].

'''Professor Gibbs''' 
Josiah Williard Gibbs (1839-1903), American mathematical physicist. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1854 he went to Yale and won prizes for excellence in Latin and mathematics. He undertook research in engineering and received his Ph.D in 1863, the first doctorate in engineering to be conferred in the US. From 1866 to 1869 Gibbs studies in Europe - first in Paris, then in Berlin and finally in Heidelberg. He was professor at Yale from 1871 to 1903. He contributed substantially to the study of thermodynamics, and his most important work, ''On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances'' (1876 and 1878) and his "phase rule" established him as a founder of physical chemistry. Gibbs' work on vector analysis was also of major importance in pure mathematics. Gibbs was one of the greatest American scientists in the 19th century. ([http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Gibbs.html Gibbs].)

'''De Forest''' 
Lee De Forest (1873-1961), American inventor. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and educated at Yale and Chicago. A pioneer of radio, he introduced the grid into the therm-ionic valve, and invented the audion (1907), feedback circuit (1912) and the four-electrode valve. He involved in first news by radio (1916). He also did much early work on sound reproduction and on television. He patented over 300 inventions in wireless telegraphy, radio, telephony, talking pictures, high-speed facsimile transmission, television, radiotherapy, radar, etc. He was called, sometimes, "the father of radio." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest De Forest].)

'''Kimura''' 
He received his Ph.D degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1896. (Dissertation: ''Studies on General Spherical Functions''.) He published a paper ''On the Nabla of Quaternions'' in ''The Annals of Mathermatics'', Vol 10, No. 1/6 (1895-1896). In 1912, he published a paper called ''One-Waveness in Wireless Telegraphy; Pseudo-Impact Excitation'' in ''Physical Review'' of May 1912. (''Nabla'' is an early name for the "del" operator, symbolized by the inverted Greek letter Δ.)

'''Ray Ipsow''' 
In Latin ''re ipso'' means "the thing itself." "To the thing itself" was the motto and rallying cry of the investigational method known as phenomenology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology Wikipedia entry] developed by Edmund Husserl [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl Wikipedia entry]. As the phrase indicates, it is a plea against abstraction--a theme of GR--- and for reality 'itself'.

'''Outer Indianoplace''' 
Derogatory nickname for Indianapolis.

'''down in New Orleans . . . that Khartoum business''' 
Evidently two Chums of Chance books we didn't know about. Perhaps ''The Chums of Chance and the Voodoo Priest'' and ''The Chums of Chance and the Mussulman Hordes.''

'''Khartoum... Mahdi's army''' 
Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. The Mahdi army refered to here was an Islamic group in the 1880s that advocated a return to strict Islamic values and battled with the government of Khartoum and Egyptian armies.More on these convoluted events at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sudan_(1884-1898) Wikipedia entry].

The concept of the Mahdi is far beyond this one historic event, however.
In point of fact, the U.S. is fighting the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army Mahdi Army] in Iraq right now.

==Page 30==

'''contrary wind . . . Oltre Giubba, instead of down at Alex''' 
From Khartoum you fly north by west to Alexandria. That wind was about as contrary as it could be: from Khartoum to Oltre Giuba is south by east. Now called [http://www.jubaland.org/ Jubaland,] Oltre Giuba (just one B, please, this isn't ''Pagliacci'') is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oltre_Giuba the southwesternmost part of Somalia,] across the Juba River from the rest. Not to be confused with Juba province in southern Sudan.
:Oh, and the Oltre Giuba diversion must have taken place before ''Inconvenience'' was fitted with hydrogen steam power, else she could have flown against the wind.

'''railroad watch''' 
High-quality pocket watch. [http://www.pockethorology.org/Railroad/Railroad.htm [pix and info]]

==Page 31==

'''Scarsdale Vibe''' 
Scarsdale NY boasts that it's Westchester County's wealthiest community, so a 'Scarsdale vibe' implies 'stinking of money'. Vibe is another Pynchon baddie whose last name starts with "V", ''e.g.'', Brock Vond in ''Vineland.''

'''"The Juggernaut"''' 
The name of Vibe's private train derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning "Lord of the Universe" one of the many names of Lord Krishna. "Krishna" itself means "black" or "dark" skinned. British colonial "urban" legend had it that Hindus sought to be crushed under the wheels of giant cars in Krishna's "chariot procession" at Puri as a way of gaining salvation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut see the Wikipedia entry.]

Capitalism has often been described as a juggernaut. One of numerous uses:
"Even as leaders of nation states compete for power and prestige, the juggernaut of capitalism diminishes borders, weakens governments and, eventually," ...
http://www.southpacific.arts.unsw.edu.au/resources/resource_nissology.htm - 
:A leading sociologist, Anthony Giddens, is also responsible for the phrase, "the juggernaut of modernity". See this incredibly relevant definition and analysis of this phrase: "The most defining property of modernity, according to Giddens, is '''that we are disembedded from time and space'''. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved, time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, however, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like, even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge. In pre-modern societies, it were the elders who possessed the knowledge: they were definable in time and space. In modern societies we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong: there's always a risk we have to take. Also the technologies which we use, and which transform constraints into means, hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a 'juggernaut': modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut traveling through space." Wikipedia [[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Giddens]]

'''in disguise . . . bodyguards and secretaries . . . ebony stick''' 
Some great disguise!

'''Foley Walker''' 
"Foley walker" is a term used to indicate a sound-effects expert. Also known as a foley artist [http://www.natf.org/wad/foley.htm [cite]]. One of the foley walker's main jobs is to add the sound of footsteps to movies where required, imitating the way the character would walk. So, a kind of 'stand-in'.

'''Forty-seventh and Ashland''' 
[[image:47th-Ashland.jpg|right|thumb|caption|47th & Ashland Avenue, 1935| 200px]][...] First, the story [...] about Ashland being named for the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire is an urban legend. Ashland Avenue, first known as Reuben Street, was already developed before the fire and was considered the height of suburban living on the West Side in the 1860s.
[http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/ashland_the_great_fire_and_the_ruins_of_chicago/ [cite]] [...] The spread of movie palaces in the automobile age presaged the spread of commercial buildings from the Loop to the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 1930, Marshall Field & Co. had created smaller versions of its downtown store in Evanston and Oak Park, while neighborhood retailers like Goldblatt's and Wieboldt's were moving downtown. Chicago developed regional shopping districts at 47th and Ashland, 63rd and Halsted, Irving Park and Pulaski, and many other locations. Certain areas catered to specialized industries, such as “Automobile Row” on South Michigan Avenue, or the Maxwell Street Market, an open-air European-style market that resisted every effort at modernization until its destruction in the 1990s. [...]
[http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/316.html [cite]]

==Page 32==

'''Second Corinthians''' 
This exchange between Vibe and Ipsow refers specifically to 2 Corinthians 11:19 -- For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
[http://www.kingjamesversionofthebible.com/47-secondcorinthians.html [cite]]

'''Ipsow's response to S. Vibe on lines 21-23( ...in these days need arises directly from criminal acts of the rich)''' can be seen as a direct paraphrase of Ch. 5 of the book of James:
Now listen you rich.. you have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! the wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields cry out against you... you have lived in luxury and fattened yourself in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed innocent men ... James 5

==Page 33==

'''"Old Zip Coon"''' 
"Old Zip Coon" dates from as early as 1834 and is considered the original name for the 19th-century American folk song, 'Turkey in the Straw'. [[Old Zip Coon | lyrics]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw Wikipedia] See also [http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/Amsong59.htm] and [http://www.csufresno.edu:80/folklore/ballads/RJ19258.html]. 
The word "coon" may originate in America as a derogatory name for a Negro, but it was current in England too (therefore not "for an African-American"). For other occurrences of the word, with show business associations in every case, see text and annotations: [[#Page_48|page 48]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424.]]
:In this contributor's boyhood, a brand of chewing tobacco heavily advertised on East Tennessee radio and television used the tune in its jingle, with lyrics close to:
<blockquote>If you like a spicy taste 
Every morning, night and noon, 
Then you're bound to like the taste 
When you chew Red Coon.</blockquote>
:The package at this time portrayed a raccoon, but it's possible a different image had come before.

'''Dr. Tesla''' 
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), American inventor. He was born in Croatia of Serbian parents. He studied at Graz (Austria), Prague and Paris. He discovered (1881) principle of rotating magnetic field, basis of practically all alternating-current (AC) machinery. Between 1882-1884 he was an engineer in Paris (1882-84) and constructed his first induction motor (1883). He emigrated to the United States (1884, naturalized in 1889). Worked for Thmoas Edison (1884-85) but left the Edison Works at Menlo Park (Edison opposed to AC idea) to concentrate on his own inventions, which include improved dynamos, transformers, electric bulbs, wireless communication (1897) and the high-frequency coil which bears his name. (Cf [[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Tesla].)

<div id="rewrite">'''violate . . . the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be''' 
Notice what he ''doesn't'' say: the principles of the free market, the essence of the capitalist economic system. As if modern history has already been written and such research would somehow undermine it.</div>

'''Sloane Lab''' 
Completed in 1912, was the gift of Henry T. Sloane, BA 1866, and William D. Sloane, MA HON. 1889. Of Longmeadow stone, it is Collegiate Gothic in style. Charles C. Haight was the architect. (An underground addition was constructed in 1958 to house a Van de Graaff machine-now removed. The John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc., and the U.S. Public Health Service financed it. Sloane Lab was the first University constructed on the Hillhouse Estate (less the three acres adjoining Sachem’s Wood). The property was a gift in 1910 of Mrs. Russell Sage, and called Pierson Sage Square. The University had wanted to acquire the land to develop into a turn-of-the-century “science park”. The well-known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead advised in the land’s development. [217 Prospect Street]
[http://www.facilities.yale.edu/campus/Building1.asp?lstBldg=1075 [cite]] and [http://www.facilities.yale.edu/images/BFS/1075.jpg [photo]].

Interestingly, Frederick Law Olmstead was also pivital in the development of the grounds for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His famous "Wooded Isle" remains a centerpiece in Chicago's Jackson Park. [http://www.hydepark.org/parks/jpac/jpkhistoryandfair.htm [link]] and
[http://www.hydepark.org/parks/pics/laggen4.JPG [photo]].

For a more detailed account of Olmstead's landscape architecture as it relates to the 1893 World's Fair, see Erik Larson's ''The Devil in the White City''.

:These would be anachronistic, but as the note for p29 above mentions, a lab existed by 1882.

'''World-System''' 
Dr. Tesla's idea of providing electrical power that anyone could tap in for free alludes the birth of wireless internet before being monopolized by b(p)ig companies and corporate greed.

==Page 34==

'''the most terrible weapon the world has seen . . . rational systems of control''' 
This statement defines the threat—as the plutocrats see it—of free power (anarchy) and their justification for bending government and every other compelling force to stamp it out.

'''out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all''' 
Vibe quotes Thomas Hobbes, who in ''Leviathan'' (1651) described the primitive state of the human race as ''bellum omnium contra omnes,'' the war of all against all, which was ended only by the creation of the State. Note the change of "war" to "anarchy."

'''Pierpont''' 
John Pierpont Morgan I (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker, who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation.
[...]
In 1900, Morgan financed inventor Nikola Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower with $150,000 for experiments in radio. Tesla was unsuccessful and, in 1904, Morgan pulled out. Later, Tesla created an AC generator
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan [cite]]

'''non-linear phenomena of scale''' 
Linear scaling means, for example, store twice as much charge, get twice as much voltage. An instance of behavior becoming nonlinear is when air insulation breaks down (arcs, lightning); here adding charge may lead to a ''decrease'' in voltage.

'''Somble, Strool & Fleshway''' 
Law firms in Pynchon have such charming names; compare Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus, and Short in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] or Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49'']. This one has more of a Dickensian sound. Somble could be a portmanteau of ''somber'' and ''tremble'' or ''some bull''; Strool, perhaps, of ''strait'' (= narrow) and ''cruel,'' or ''stool'' and ''drool''. "Fleshway" might suggest a reference to Samuel Butler's ''The Way of All Flesh,'' which was not published until 1903, but it seems more likely to go back to [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20041027.shtml a biblical phrase] associated with death.

Using the onomatapeia technique such as in the ''Gravity's Rainbow'' law firm, we start to get 'Some Bull, is ('t) Drool And.......Help needed! How about "some bull's strool and fleshway." Strool being the portmanteau of stool and drool, and fleshway being the meaty part of the flushway (g.i. tract, anus) -- you know, something like bullshit with the consitency of diarrhea.

Incidentally, Strool is an actual surname as well as the name of a town in South Dakota.

By the way, Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (see "all against all" entry toward the top of this page) is also the source of Salitieri et al. ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," describing the life of human beings in their primitive state). 

'''vestiary''' 
Of, or relating to, clothing.

==Page 36==

'''Fairgoers would see the ship overhead and yet not see it''' 
Useful property for a surveillance platform.

'''Lew Basnight''' 
"Bas" is French for "low", though "bas nuit" means nothing in French.

A detective named 'Lew' reminds us (who is "us"?) of Ross Macdonald's character Lew Archer which in turn recalls another detective, Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade in San Francisco detective agency Spade & Archer. This may be a bad pun on 'lube-ass night' and also might refer to the incident causing Lew to be shunned by his peers.

[[image:beaver-on-the-brain.jpg|thumb|Beaver on the Brain T-Shirt|right]]Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, working a whole sexual angle, naming his character after the phrase "BAS night," meaning a boys' night out, "BAS" being an acronym for "Bitches Ain't Shit" from the [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drdre/bitchesaintshit.html "song" by Dr. Dre] (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). And, hey, Lew meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie Shaft? Twat crossed w/clit? A-and isn't that tetractys an inverted beaver?), where he meets Yashmeen, a ''very'' sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode ([[ATD 171-198#Page 183|p. 183]]) (Beavers, fercrissakes!). Perhaps something worth following up ... or not!

It is possible Basnight is an Americanization of the German "Fasnacht". "Fastnacht or Fasnacht is the pre-Lenten carnival in Alemannic folklore in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and western Austria. It is also known in parts of Pennsylvania Dutch Country as Fauschnaut Day and is celebrated on the day before Ash Wednesday, or the last Tuesday before Lent." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasnacht]

"A likely derivation is from PIE pwo- "purify" (cognate to pava-mana), or alternatively connected with Middle High German vaselen "prosper, bud" and interpreted as a fertility rite."

Fasnacht Day is known in English as Shrove Tuesday. "The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday] All of this seems to tally well with the Basnight character.

Another pun theory: on page 38, Lew is described as being in an ignorance "black as night." This can be abbreviated to "Basnight."
Lew is pronounced "loo," which of course is the British toilet.
Lew Basnight then means, "toilet, black as night." Just a thought...

'''White City Investigations''' 
Since the White City dates from 01 May 1893, this ought to be later.

The name recalls the White Visitation of [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. Any connection?

==Page 37==
'''fictitiousness''' 
On this and the previous page, there is a question raised of whether the Chums are fictional. Or it could be saying that such fantastical sights as the airship are easy to miss at the fair.

It seems more likely that the comparison here is simply between that of the fair, a small, self-contained world of marvels (like all World's Fairs) and the "real world" outside its gates.

There is lots more going on (and it's ''lots'' more interesting). Consider these passages on pages 36-37:
*the . . . celebration possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and agency
*The harsh nonfictional world waited outside the White City's limits
*he (Lew) had not . . . heard of the Chums of Chance
*every boy knows the Chums of Chance
*you're not storybook characters. . . . Are you?
Too much back-and-forth about fiction to be '''just''' about the exposition and the real world. Some premises that are implicit here:
*The Chums know that they live in literature whether they have a "real" existence or not.
*They know their books are popular with an audience of boys. (Lindsay is surprised that Lew didn't read them earlier, not that he isn't reading them now.)
*Lew doesn't regard objective evidence (they are standing before him, he's ascended in their ship) as sufficient to rule out ambiguity (". . . Are you?").
*The lads are able to experience and act only in a quasi-fictitious environment. Off the fairgrounds (in the WCI office), Randolph gives nothing but answers scripted for him by National.
All this suggests that even the Chums aren't sure on what level they exist. They definitely have adventures, as recorded in their books, but they don't seem to have adventures ''not'' contained in the novels.
What will happen if they come to the end of a ''Chums'' book while we are still reading ''AtD''?

'''No more than Wyatt Earp or Nellie Bly''' 
See the next two entries. Earp had a "real" life but people remember him chiefly because of stories written about him (and by him through ghostwriters, [http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/zpub2000/sfentries&cmd=list&range=0,50&Title~=E&cmd=all&Id=98 link 1], [http://www.ferncanyonpress.com/tombston/robbery.shtml link 2]). Bly entertained masses of people by having adventures and then writing about them. Each "lived" through a body of literature.

'''Wyatt Earp''' 
(1848–1929), was a teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, and saloon-keeper in the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to Alaska. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp Wikipedia]

'''Nellie Bly''' 
(1864-1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Wikipedia]

'''Regarding Lew Basnight's malady...''' 
Again, there seems to be a character with a neurological illness; in this case it is presented as amnesia, but seizures also result in "lost time". (See comments on Miles' "electricity coming on" on page 24.) Such maladies are more common than one supposes, and can offer a glimpse of other-worldliness akin to that of hallucinogenics, and epileptics have, at times, been considered to have access to past or future lives.
:OR it could be the case that Lew has fallen through a crack in time-space and entered a parallel universe; in the previous universe (which he simply remembers as the past), he had not done anything wrong, which explains his perplexity. The same might be the case with Miles, which would be why he did not expect baskets of crockery near his feet. Such moving among worlds is a thread in this work.

'''making a point of pronouncing his name disrespectfully''' 
The only way it could be done is, apparently, by saying Lube Ass Night. Well, that or tone of voice.

'''the Upstate-Downstate Beast''' 
Illinois is one of three states with an Upstate, though one of them doesn't use the term Downstate (South Carolina divides itself into Upstate and Lowcountry). The nickname points to a traveling man, perhaps. "Moral horror," "denounced," "revulsion" probably fit with many crimes, though most of those would have led to a prison sentence and we don't have any information of Lew's serving time.

'''"Although the longer a fellow's name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from non-fiction."''' 
May express Pynchon's reaction to the press' treatment of him over the years. In 1964, when Pynchon heard that the ''New York Herald Tribune'' was writing an article about him, Pynchon wrote to his agent that he assumed the piece "will be riddled with the same lies, calumnies and all-around knavish disregard for my privacy" as previous articles. ("Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask," ''New York Times,'' 4 Mar 1998).

'''Wensleydale''' 
A type of cheese made in Yorkshire, England.

==Page 38==

'''"You have destroyed your name."''' 
Wensleydale using very strong language. He doesn't say "destroyed your reputation" or "discredited your name" but "''destroyed'' your name." Does anyone else see this as suggesting Lew's name was not Lew Basnight before his sin?

'''to plead with him to come back''' 
A strange response, that Troth should ask the Upstate-Downstate Beast to return to her. You would think she'd prefer him as far away as he could get.

'''one of your other wives''' 
A direct reference to Lew's sin, or is Troth just pelting Lew with anything that's in reach?

==Page 39==

'''kazoos''' 
This silly instrument appears in several Pynchon novels.

'''slow ritual movement''' 
Maybe tai chi, or anachronistic Gurdjieffian dance?

'''Drave''' 
A noun meaning, according to the OED, a "fishing expedition in which several men take part, each supplying a net and receiving a share of the profits made. Later, A haul (of fish); also, a shoal." There is also a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drave Drave river] in south central Europe, though there seems to be no textual evidence to support this association.

'''Saratoga chips''' 
Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs, NY, and were often called Saratoga chips in the 19th century.

'''Esthonia Hotel''' 
How the country Estonia was spelled in English during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Atonia is a lack of normal muscle tension, but also, "A frightening form of paralysis that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, most often upon falling asleep or waking up. Commonly called sleep paralysis, the condition is due to an ill-timed disconnection between the brain and the body." [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9811 Definition] This could mean that the hotel in question is nothing more than an internal hallucination of Basnight's, further suggesting that his problem is one of neurological rather than simply moral or spiritual cause.

'''"liable for criminal penalties"''' 
Law and the legal profession so far appear in AtD more than any other Pynchon novel (perhaps save ''The Crying of Lot 49''), and so far, like here, in a negative or confusing light. Perhaps Pynchon sees law as part of the general establishment the novel seems to criticize/oppose.

==Page 40==

'''lofty regions no high-iron pioneer had yet dared''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainwright_Building In the early 1890s] anything taller than about 10 stories would have qualified.

'''remembrance stick''' 
Similar to keisaku in Zen Buddhism, an attempt by a sensei to alert students to their mindlessness in zazen (sitting meditation), usually administered by a stick. An English translation is stick of compassion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyosaku [Wikipedia]]

Lew's performance of commonplace and strange chores is also similar to the way Zen training can proceed for novitiates.

==Page 41==

'''you keep bouncing free. Avoiding penance and thereby definition''' 
It is hard to tie Drave down philosophically. No connection between sin and penance, penance as destiny, penance happens or doesn't, and now this idea that penance ''defines'' one's existence.

==Page 42==

'''Spring arrived''' 
We've seen Lew pretty well through a year: summertime (p. 38) when Troth followed him to Chicago, autumn (p. 40) when he checked in at the Esthonia, winter (p. 41) as his bank account starved, now in the spring his moment of grace.

'''scorcher cap''' 
The cap of an early bicycling enthusiast. According to [http://www.velorution.biz/?p=1288 this site]:

:"In […]1892 [… a] bicyclist to be considered genuine had to be dressed in bicycle clothes. A man had to wear bicycle pants which were baggy at the top and tight to the legs below. Then he had to have bicycle socks and shoes. The shoes were made of canvass. Then he had to have a loose fitting grey colored short which we would designate now as a sport shirt. Then on his head he had to wear a tight fitting cap with a long bill in front, the longer the better up to a certain ceiling length. With this outfit and a bicycle with drop handlebars he was ready to appear in public as a real cyclist. If he could make 20 miles an hour on a good track he was called a 'scorcher,' the idea being that he was going so fast that he would scorch at least the end of his nose if nothing else."

'''shirtwaists with huge shoulders''' 
[[image:shirtwaist.jpg|thumb|caption|Shirtwaists|150px|right]]Fashionable the year of the Fair, the shirtwaist is a dress with a bodice (waist) like a tailored shirt and an attached straight or full skirt, the huge shoulders being the sort of "puffy" look of the sleeves. They are now called blouses. Compare Chevrolette McAdoo's outfit, [[ATD_26-56#Page 26|p. 26]].

'''He understood that things were exactly what they were.''' 
This sentence sums up the entire experience at the Esthonia hotel, which seems to be a Zen-like initiation. Here, Lew Basnight seems to have attained some form of enlightenment, and the description ("a condition...which he later came to think of as grace"), along with this sentence, are almost textbook examples of Zen enlightenment. No lights flash, no changes are seen; one merely understands that things are what they are. After this experience, he leaves the hotel, and no longer needs to be there. He then embarks on his new career, in part because of his extreme ability to notice minute details; something that he was not said to have had before.
:The sentence can also serve as a guide to readers of ''AtD.'' Even when it is tempting to speculate that "this paragraph is about Richard Nixon" or protest that "you can't see Sirius on a summer evening," it is worth the effort to let the text mean what it means.

==Page 43==

'''transfigured''' 
In Lew's time of grace, he shows a changed face.

'''leisurely rips through the fabric of the day''' 
See below

==Page 44==

'''He had learned to step to the side of the day.''' 
Through the book there are juxtapositions of things with and against the day (the 'title motif'). Here, we are told that Lew has learned to step "to the side" of the day. Possibly he is able to enter another plane? This is possible considering the dream-like hotel sequence on previous pages.
:I think that the "other plane" interpretation is a bit of a stretch. The passage seems to imply that Lew has learned to will and maintain a degree of detachment from his surroundings, perhaps a relinquishment of his perceived control over events or his attempts to control them.
: -- I don't see it as a stretch if we accept that he now recognizes that there are alternate, parallel, universes.

'''it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts''' 
The quotes here may be to distinguish the fact that while technically living in Chicago, Lew sometimes exists or moves within a place or plane that others also living there don't see, or have access to.
:Yes, or universes rather than planes.

==Page 45==

'''two-headed eagle''' 
As Holy Roman Emperor, the Austro-Hungarian emperor bore a two-headed eagle (each head crowned) as part of his arms. The Tsar of Russia also used a two-headed eagle, but it was triply crowned (one crown between the heads). The Serbian two-headed eagle appeared on a shield with one crown above it, and the Montenegrin one had a single crown between the heads. Other details of the envelope would serve to disambiguate.

'''Trabants''' 
"Trabanten" (German for 'satellites') originally - during the Thirty Years' War - were lightly armed foot soldiers; later this term was used for servants and/or bodyguards of high-ranking persons.

'''"have a lawyer explain civil liability to you"''' 
Again, law.

'''gumshoe''' 
Perhaps a bit too early to use this term; the Dictionary of American Slang dates it as "by 1906".

'''a couple a thousand hunkies''' 
"Hunkies" was a slur against Hungarians and other eastern Europeans. The word may have morphed into "honkies."

'''Francis Ferdinand''' 
This is indeed the same Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in 1914 triggered World War I. At the time of his appearance in ''AtD'', he would have been 30, and his two passions throughout young adulthood and his 20s were travel and hunting (it is estimated that he shot more than 5,000 deer in his lifetime). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Wikipedia entry]. He did indeed attend the Chicago Exposition. [http://columbus.iit.edu/bookfair/ch27.html]

Click for [[The Habsburgs in Against the Day]]...

See the annotation about Austria-Hungary on the next page.

'''shive artist''' 
Someone proficient with a knife (shive=knife or razor).

'''to rewrite history''' 
Hold on, '''re'''write? As Vibe did on [[#rewrite|page 33,]] Privett seems to reason that history has already been decided and some action would change it rather than generate a valid new history.

==Page 46==

'''"staff," a mixture of plaster and hemp fibers''' 
[http://ftp.apci.net/~truax/1904wf/WF_Mem-Staff.htm Pix and info... ]

[http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html One source] says it was jute, not hemp.

According to [http://www.buildingstonemagazine.com/summer-06/historic.html ''Building Stone'' magazine,] the buildings were meant to be painted in bright colors, but the Chicago climate put the kibosh on that. Even keeping them white called for continuous repainting.

The Museum of Science and Industry is the only structure surviving from the exposition. Built as the Palace of Fine Arts, it started out faced in staff but was later [http://www.aviewoncities.com/chicago/museumofscienceandindustry.htm rebuilt] to the original exterior design in limestone and marble.

'''to counterfeit some deathless white stone''' 

Given the many references throughout ''AtD'' to "white" and "stones" to ''counterfeit'' a ''deathless'' white stone seems portentous.

'''"In Austria," the Archduke was explaining, ". . . the Chicago Stockyards might possibly be rented out . . . for a weekend's amusement"''' 

Pynchon continues his linking of the Stockyard killing-floor with the genocidal horrors of the 20th Century, it seems. See above. Heidegger (sic) made this connection somewhere and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maxwell_Coetzee J.M Coetze's] novel ''Elizabeth Costello'' uses it in a key chapter that was published separately.

'''beaters who drive the animals toward the hunters . . . waiting to shoot them''' 
Skillful use of ambiguity: waiting to shoot the animals or the beaters?

'''"Hungarians occupy the lowest level of brute existence"''' 
Even if the quote might be fictive, the Archduke's characterization is close to the point. Franz Ferdinand, a dour reactionary with aggressive ideas in foreign policy, had the reputation of an avowed Hungarophobe. The Compromise of 1867 created a dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which the Archduke sought to transform in a "trialistic" way, giving an enivsioned southern Slav union of Croatia (which was united in a sub-confederation with Hungary), Bosnia and Dalmatia a status similar to that of the Kingdom of Hungary. Note how the Czechs, a population about twice as large as southwestern Slavs, were omitted from this scheme. The idea was evidently to weaken the Hungarian establishment, and recentralize power in Vienna.

'''Mannlicher''' 
A double-barreled rifle designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher. It is reported that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had several of these made special for him.

Interestingly enough, the rifle is also mentioned in ''Green Hills of Africa'' and ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'' by Ernest Hemingway, who used it extensively on hunting.

Franz was eventually assassinated in Sarajevo. Coincidentally (?), fellow assassinee JFK was initially claimed to have been a victim of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher rifle.

==Page 47==

'''K&K Special Security''' 
"K&K" stands for "Kaiserlich und Königlich," German for "imperial and royal (kingly)," to indicate the Austrian two titles of the ruler of the Dual Monarchy: King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserlich_und_königlich Wikipedia entry].

'''Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit''' 
This is not a German word as far as I know and most likely not even a degenerate Habsburg or one of his officers would have used it (but then I haven't read Franz Ferdinand's account of his travels...). Sounds more like some Babelfish machine translation of "pastry-depravity" to me. I wonder what the German translator will make of this. My guess is, s/he will not make a "typical German" combined noun out of it, but turn the phrase to be able to use an adverb like "mehlspeisennarrisch" instead (what with in Austria and Bavaria there is a word for (mostly sweet) pastry: "Mehlspeise" (literally "flour-meal), and "narrisch" is Austrian/Viennese for being (slightly) mad). But then, of course, there might be a pun intended I as a bad english-speaker just dont get. Maybe via the pronounciation? Check out this [http://www.dict.cc/?s=Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit dictionary], head for "continue searching" and press "voice output" - voila, thats what "Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit" sounds like.

The term probably is made up, but the meaning is more like "shameful addiction to cookie dough." In the context of detectives, what may be happening here is this: The Austrians have heard the canard that American policemen are addicted to doughnuts, but they misunderstand both ''doughnut'' and ''addicted.''

Another possibility: Austrians have read that American detectives will do anything for dough.

'''Boll Weevil Lounge''' 
The boll weevil, a destructive cotton pest, first arrived in America (via Mexico) in 1892, only one year before the opening section of ATD. It is a fitting name for a "Negro Bar" as the boll weevil is the subject of dozens of blues songs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil [Wikipedia]]

1893 is too soon for the songs and probably for the lounge too. Cotton was still king in the South; the big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_States_and_International_Exposition_%281895%29 Atlanta exposition] was two years in the future, and the economic dislocation had not properly begun. The boll weevil songs date from the teens-20s and later.

'''...the only place in Chicago a man could find a decent orange phosphate...''' 
A reference to the modern stereotype that black people like orange soda, here called a phosphate.

==Page 48==

'''Wassermelone''' 
Watermelon; another black stereotype...

'''grip cars''' 
The lead cars in cable-car systems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_City_Railway [Wikipedia]]

'''''deine Mutti'', as you would say''' 
Franz Ferdinand is attempting to engage the patrons of the Boll Weevil Lounge in a game of "the dozens", an insult contest in which opponents make fun of each other's mothers. "The dozens" has its origins in the New Orleans slave trade. As with the boll weevil, "the dozens" is closely associated with blues music. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dozens [Wikipedia]]

'''the World's Fair, not the World's Ugly''' 
A fairly sophisticated pun, if F.F.'s English is so rudimentary.

'''''...'st los, Hund?''''' 
German for "'s up, dog?"

'''All Pimps Look Alike to Me''' 
An early rag by Ernest Hogan was entitled All Coons Look Alike to Me; "Hogan was evidently not the originator of the song's lyrics, having appropriated them after hearing a pianist in a Chicago salon playing a song titled "All Pimps Look Alike to Me"". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hogan See this article.] 
For more "coon" references see text and annotations: [[#Page_33|page 33]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and especially [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424]].

''Who's usin' who? What should we do? Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too'' 
(Icky Thump - White Stripes) / not relevant to this entry but worth listening to.

'''scapegrace''' 
Scoundrel.

'''And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!''' 
WWI?

Was Franz Ferdinand some sort of ruthless cosmopolitan at the time being? You can really see it from his ATD passages.

'''keester''' 
Buttocks.

==Page 49==

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

'''At first Lew took it for a church''' 
This could be an allusion to the film, ''On The Waterfront'', and a similar scene when Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is sent by Johnny Friendly and Co. to eavesdrop on a meeting being held in a church by local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) along with workers from the docks who are fed up with Friendly and the Mob, especially in light of a recent death. Social themes of film seem apt as well. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_waterfront].

Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich)incidentally was a product of this milieu, born in Chicago in 1912 to a Serb steelworker father and Czech seamstress mother. The Sekulovich family hails from Herzegovina.

'''Welsbach mantles''' 
One of the most important advances in the history of lighting, the Welsbach mantle (for a period so ubiquitous it became more commonly known simply as 'gas mantle') was first sold commercially in 1892 and quickly spread throughout Europe. It remained an important part of street lighting until the widespread introduction of electric lighting in the early 1900s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle Wikipedia entry].

'''Reverend Moss Gatlin''' 
A fictional character. Is he connected to Rev. Cherrycoke? They are both Reverends with strong political opinions and you can hear Pynchon's voice here very strong.

Possible allusion to Reverend Fr. John M. Corridan, the real-life counterpart of Father Barry in ''On The Waterfront''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Corridan Wikipedia]

Some real, or anyway nonfictional, anarchist preachers:
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard107.html Thomas Olney,] 17th-century Baptist anarchist who was influential in Rhode Island
*[http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol055/96047023.html Rudolf Rocker] (1873-1958), nicknamed the "anarchist rabbi"
*[http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis,] Dutch minister who came to anarchism in 1897
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/critics/mckinley/chap4.html Albert Dahlquist and Joseph A. Wildman,] caught up in persecutions after the McKinley assassination (Dahlquist was nearly lynched; Wildman was tarred and feathered)
*[http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301208.shtml Father Frank Morales,] participant in Portland anti-globalization demonstrations
*[http://www.deadanarchists.org/anton.html Hugh O. Pentecost,] who in 1889 was slated to address a meeting in commemoration of the Haymarket; Philadelphia authorities suppressed the gathering

'''fascinators''' 
Hair adornments. [http://www.ribbonsandpearls.co.uk/catalogue/fascinators/fascinator_hair_accessories_intro.htm [pix]]

'''bearing the insults of the day''' 
See notes on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''Blake's Jerusalem''' 
The original lines From William Blake's poem are:

I will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England's green and pleasant land.

'''Fierce as the winter's tempest . . . Death's for the bought and sold!''' 
This lyric does not come up in a Google search. It doesn't flow like any other lyric in Pynchon but reads like a rather good hymn text. No variations in the meter, no words broken for the sake of rhyme, no punctuation to show lengthened or chopped syllables. And yet thematically it is a seamless fit with the text around it. Are the lines original in ''AtD,'' or can their source be identified?

==Page 50==

'''Picardy third''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy_third Wikipedia entry]

==Page 51==

'''deadfalls''' 
Low points where refuse collects? Cf. Pynchon's story, Low-Lands?[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deadfalls [def]]

'''prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate''' 
Coupled with the cover blurb Pynchon wrote: "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction." Could ''Against the Day'' be Pynchon's prophecy of a future America?

[[image:we_never_sleep.jpg|thumb|175px|right]]'''The Unsleeping Eye''' 
Reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency. Pinkerton's National Detective Agency had a logo with an eye in the center, and below it read, "We Never Sleep." See also [[ATD_1-25#Page_13|page 13]].

'''bay rum''' 
A type of cologne or after-shave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_rum Wikipedia article]

==Page 52==

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Lew Basnight's temporary presence on the airship may be the first clue as to why it's called ''Inconvenience''. Perhaps his growing sympathy for the anarchists will lead to greater involvement by him, the Chums, or at least the book in portraying the anarchist movement, which is viewed as an inconvenience to the ruling classes. Pynchon may consider his novel's message, similarly, as an inconvenient truth about America's past, present or both.

:I thought it was just a polysyllable that sounds stately but means the opposite.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:18, 5 December 2006 (PST)

In ''Mason & Dixon'', the willful reality of other people are referred to as inconveniences more than once.

'''the whiteness of the place nearly unbearable''' 
Causing an effect something like snow blindness.

'''some weeks till the fair closes''' 
30 October 1893.

'''our future's all a blank''' 
Whoever the Chums get their orders from, they have not received any new ones yet. They look ahead and see a blank page.

'''Freddie Turner''' 
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 - 1932) was, with Charles A. Beard, the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He is best known for ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', an essay which describes his views on how the idea of the frontier shaped the American character, and how the frontier drove American history and America's westward expansion. Excerpt: "In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization."
[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html eText here...]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Wikipedia]

==Page 53==

'''Here's where the Trail comes to an end at last''' 
With the advent of the railroad, the West changed dramatically. Chicago became the stockyards and slaughterhouse of America, and cowboys only funneled their cattle in that direction, no longer simply following them on the range or leading them to more local places of slaughter. The cowboy had become a cog in the wheel of a mechanism of death.

'''Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches''' 
Mentioned in 1911 Britannica article 'Slaughter-house' [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Slaughter-house [etext]]

'''charabanc''' 
An open-topped bus for tourists.

'''"The frontier ends and disconnection begins"''' 
Here, the free cowboy myth of Buffalo Bill's show is replaced by the grim reality of the stockyard worker.

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

'''How the dickens do I know?''' 
A possible reference to the novels of Charles Dickens, who critiques in such works as ''Hard Times'' (1854) the onset of urban decay, and the choked living and working conditions of the proletariat as the Industrial Revolution steams onward. 
Or it may just be a standard euphemism; polite speakers were enjoined not to name the Devil.

'''hob-raising years''' 
Hell-raising years; his early years. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hob Definition of "hob".]

==Page 54==

'''where you knew you could stand and piss would flow two ways at once.''' 
The Professor is talking about growing up in Colorado, where the Continental Divide passes. It would be logical to suggest that, at the precise location of this divide, piss would indeed flow both east and west.
:For Easterners at least, it's a well-known tourist ritual to pee right on the line.

The best place to do this, for tourists, is at Cache La Poudre Lake, headwaters of the Colorado River on Trail Ridge Road (US 34) in Rocky Mountain National Park—it is exactly on the Divide, and water exits to East and West, Atlantic and Pacific.

'''into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well''' 
Describing Lew's movement now, but a few pages previously that of the stock at the slaughterhouse.

'''Cheerfulness . . . a precarious commodity''' 
The original narrator of the Chums passages has definitely been pushed aside now. They seem to be in a totally different book.

==Page 55==

'''. . . they continued in a fragmented reverie which, . . . often announced some change in the works''' 
Good to notice when the Chums get like this again: i.e. unfocused, depressed, without direction, it may lead to patterns in the plot.
:No Fair, no orders, no adventures: The Chums are between books!

'''Speculation began to fill the day.''' 
See note on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''the ill-famed Hawk''' 
In deepening autumn it is ''rehearsing'' "swift descent, merciless assault, rapture of souls"; at the end of the passage "the temperature head[s] down." The Hawk appears to be a metaphor for winter or its storms. ([http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_hawk/ possible definition?]) 
:That is pretty conclusive. ''Hawk'' an established and documented metaphor for the winter wind.
The Hawk is also one of the ubiquitous birds of prey in ATD. The words showing its lethal effect and the drop in temperature are Pynchon themes
for evil. Evil comes from the lands of low temperatures. See GR.

In addition to these meanings, TRP also demonstrates local knowledge here, as the Hawk is the name of a specific wind in Chicago. The Hawk is the name of a northeast wind, one that comes off Lake Michigan usually in the spring. A meteorologist will tell you that a northeast wind is somewhat unusual, contrary to (or against) the prevailing winds that generally come from the west. The effects of the Hawk can be seen at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where centerfield is on the northeast corner of Sheffield and Waveland. When the Hawk is blowing hits that, given a usual southwest wind, have a chance at being home runs will die in the outfield and are easily caught. The Hawk is a reminder that, though winter has left town, it will be back. The wind has a very particular resonance for a Chicagoan, and it's very impressive that Pynchon, not a native, should make use of it, especially in such an offhand manner.

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

ATD 26-56

2008-10-26T07:22:52Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 39 */

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

==Page 26==

'''egret plumes''' 
Some species of egrets were threatened with extinction in the 19th century because their plumes (also called ''aigrettes'') were much used in millinery. Problem is, the egrets grew the showy feathers only in breeding season, so that's when they were killed, hence no little egrets (egretlets?).

'''Little Egypt''' 
was the stage name for two popular exotic dancers, Ashea Wabe who danced at the Seeley banquet at the 1893 World's Fair and Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, also performing under the stage name Fatima, appeared at the "Street in Cairo" exhibition on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(dancer) Wikipedia entry] Also a 1961 [[Little_Egypt|song]] by the Coasters.

==Page 27==

'''Bacchanale''' 
From ''Samson et Dalila'', op. 47 (1877) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_and_Delilah_%28opera%29 Wikipedia entry]. Listen to a [http://themodernword.com/wiki/bacchanale.mp3 30 second MP3 sample]

"Bacchanalia" describes not just the music but the dance too, in this context.

'''from here to Timbuctoo''' 
Now known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu Timbuktu,] a standard figure of speech for the other end of Creation.

'''Maxim whirling machines...''' 
This paragraph describes a number of real flying apparati: [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Aero_Oct1893.html This article] from October 1893 describes the Maxim whirling machine and others.

'''ornithurgy''' 
Invented word?

My guess is that it signifies something like bird-works: 
ornith- variant of ornitho; [New Latin orntho-, from Greek, from orns, ornth-, bird;] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ornitho-] 
-urgy [New Latin -rgia, from Greek -ourgi, from -ourgos, working, from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/-urgy]

'''Dally''' 
Merle's relationship with Dally is reminiscent of Ryan and Tatum O'Neal's characters in the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film, "Paper Moon". Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 28==

'''''Imbottigliata!''''' Italian for "bottled".

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
The Lolita motif is common in Pynchon's works. Other Lolitas include Bianca in [[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow.'']

:Dahlia is four or five years old! She is not a Lolita motif here. Lolita was twelve and Humbert was sick.

::Too early in the novel to jump into such conclusions.

'''in Randolph's face a degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic''' 
Randolph "froze" previously, on page 12; evidently this is a trait already established in the ''Chums'' novels.

'''fulminate me if she ain't''' 
What an odd turn of phrase: set me off explosively.

'''this Trouvé-screw unit over here''' 
Gustave Trouvé built advanced machinery from the 1860s to the 1890s; [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Screws_May1892.html his work on airscrews] was pivotal, and he also invented [http://www.electricrecordteam.com/history.htm the outboard motor.] Before Trouvé's design studies, propulsion in the air used sail-rotors like windmills or depended on slightly modified marine propellers.

==Page 29==

'''Midway Plaisance''' 
The big central concourse of the White City. "Plaisance" is an alternative (or Frenchified) spelling of "pleasance," an esthetically appealing spot. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this very good site] on the Columbian Exposition, the Midway Plaisance lent its name to the midways of circuses ever after.

'''a l'étouffée''' 
French, meaning braised. So, braised alligator meat. Braised food, for instance crawfish, is a culinary specialty of New Orleans.

In the New Orleans context, a recipe is pertinent because "braise" doesn't exactly tell the story of this Cajun preparation. The following is drastically abridged from, of all things, the obituary of Joe Daole ("Joe Dale") in the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' April 21, 2007:
:Saute onion, green pepper, celery, parsley and garlic in a great deal of butter. Add peeled and chopped tomatoes and seasonings. Simmer, covered, 5-10 minutes. Make a dark brown roux with oil and flour; add to vegetables. Add seafood stock and bring to a boil. Add peeled shrimp or crawfish tail meat and cook just 2-3 minutes. Serve over rice.

'''Sloane Laboratory''' 
Yale's physics lab built 1882. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_33|page 33]].

'''Professor Gibbs''' 
Josiah Williard Gibbs (1839-1903), American mathematical physicist. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1854 he went to Yale and won prizes for excellence in Latin and mathematics. He undertook research in engineering and received his Ph.D in 1863, the first doctorate in engineering to be conferred in the US. From 1866 to 1869 Gibbs studies in Europe - first in Paris, then in Berlin and finally in Heidelberg. He was professor at Yale from 1871 to 1903. He contributed substantially to the study of thermodynamics, and his most important work, ''On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances'' (1876 and 1878) and his "phase rule" established him as a founder of physical chemistry. Gibbs' work on vector analysis was also of major importance in pure mathematics. Gibbs was one of the greatest American scientists in the 19th century. ([http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Gibbs.html Gibbs].)

'''De Forest''' 
Lee De Forest (1873-1961), American inventor. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and educated at Yale and Chicago. A pioneer of radio, he introduced the grid into the therm-ionic valve, and invented the audion (1907), feedback circuit (1912) and the four-electrode valve. He involved in first news by radio (1916). He also did much early work on sound reproduction and on television. He patented over 300 inventions in wireless telegraphy, radio, telephony, talking pictures, high-speed facsimile transmission, television, radiotherapy, radar, etc. He was called, sometimes, "the father of radio." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest De Forest].)

'''Kimura''' 
He received his Ph.D degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1896. (Dissertation: ''Studies on General Spherical Functions''.) He published a paper ''On the Nabla of Quaternions'' in ''The Annals of Mathermatics'', Vol 10, No. 1/6 (1895-1896). In 1912, he published a paper called ''One-Waveness in Wireless Telegraphy; Pseudo-Impact Excitation'' in ''Physical Review'' of May 1912. (''Nabla'' is an early name for the "del" operator, symbolized by the inverted Greek letter Δ.)

'''Ray Ipsow''' 
In Latin ''re ipso'' means "the thing itself." "To the thing itself" was the motto and rallying cry of the investigational method known as phenomenology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology Wikipedia entry] developed by Edmund Husserl [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl Wikipedia entry]. As the phrase indicates, it is a plea against abstraction--a theme of GR--- and for reality 'itself'.

'''Outer Indianoplace''' 
Derogatory nickname for Indianapolis.

'''down in New Orleans . . . that Khartoum business''' 
Evidently two Chums of Chance books we didn't know about. Perhaps ''The Chums of Chance and the Voodoo Priest'' and ''The Chums of Chance and the Mussulman Hordes.''

'''Khartoum... Mahdi's army''' 
Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. The Mahdi army refered to here was an Islamic group in the 1880s that advocated a return to strict Islamic values and battled with the government of Khartoum and Egyptian armies.More on these convoluted events at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sudan_(1884-1898) Wikipedia entry].

The concept of the Mahdi is far beyond this one historic event, however.
In point of fact, the U.S. is fighting the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army Mahdi Army] in Iraq right now.

==Page 30==

'''contrary wind . . . Oltre Giubba, instead of down at Alex''' 
From Khartoum you fly north by west to Alexandria. That wind was about as contrary as it could be: from Khartoum to Oltre Giuba is south by east. Now called [http://www.jubaland.org/ Jubaland,] Oltre Giuba (just one B, please, this isn't ''Pagliacci'') is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oltre_Giuba the southwesternmost part of Somalia,] across the Juba River from the rest. Not to be confused with Juba province in southern Sudan.
:Oh, and the Oltre Giuba diversion must have taken place before ''Inconvenience'' was fitted with hydrogen steam power, else she could have flown against the wind.

'''railroad watch''' 
High-quality pocket watch. [http://www.pockethorology.org/Railroad/Railroad.htm [pix and info]]

==Page 31==

'''Scarsdale Vibe''' 
Scarsdale NY boasts that it's Westchester County's wealthiest community, so a 'Scarsdale vibe' implies 'stinking of money'. Vibe is another Pynchon baddie whose last name starts with "V", ''e.g.'', Brock Vond in ''Vineland.''

'''"The Juggernaut"''' 
The name of Vibe's private train derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning "Lord of the Universe" one of the many names of Lord Krishna. "Krishna" itself means "black" or "dark" skinned. British colonial "urban" legend had it that Hindus sought to be crushed under the wheels of giant cars in Krishna's "chariot procession" at Puri as a way of gaining salvation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut see the Wikipedia entry.]

Capitalism has often been described as a juggernaut. One of numerous uses:
"Even as leaders of nation states compete for power and prestige, the juggernaut of capitalism diminishes borders, weakens governments and, eventually," ...
http://www.southpacific.arts.unsw.edu.au/resources/resource_nissology.htm - 
:A leading sociologist, Anthony Giddens, is also responsible for the phrase, "the juggernaut of modernity". See this incredibly relevant definition and analysis of this phrase: "The most defining property of modernity, according to Giddens, is '''that we are disembedded from time and space'''. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved, time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, however, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like, even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge. In pre-modern societies, it were the elders who possessed the knowledge: they were definable in time and space. In modern societies we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong: there's always a risk we have to take. Also the technologies which we use, and which transform constraints into means, hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a 'juggernaut': modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut traveling through space." Wikipedia [[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Giddens]]

'''in disguise . . . bodyguards and secretaries . . . ebony stick''' 
Some great disguise!

'''Foley Walker''' 
"Foley walker" is a term used to indicate a sound-effects expert. Also known as a foley artist [http://www.natf.org/wad/foley.htm [cite]]. One of the foley walker's main jobs is to add the sound of footsteps to movies where required, imitating the way the character would walk. So, a kind of 'stand-in'.

'''Forty-seventh and Ashland''' 
[[image:47th-Ashland.jpg|right|thumb|caption|47th & Ashland Avenue, 1935| 200px]][...] First, the story [...] about Ashland being named for the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire is an urban legend. Ashland Avenue, first known as Reuben Street, was already developed before the fire and was considered the height of suburban living on the West Side in the 1860s.
[http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/ashland_the_great_fire_and_the_ruins_of_chicago/ [cite]] [...] The spread of movie palaces in the automobile age presaged the spread of commercial buildings from the Loop to the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 1930, Marshall Field & Co. had created smaller versions of its downtown store in Evanston and Oak Park, while neighborhood retailers like Goldblatt's and Wieboldt's were moving downtown. Chicago developed regional shopping districts at 47th and Ashland, 63rd and Halsted, Irving Park and Pulaski, and many other locations. Certain areas catered to specialized industries, such as “Automobile Row” on South Michigan Avenue, or the Maxwell Street Market, an open-air European-style market that resisted every effort at modernization until its destruction in the 1990s. [...]
[http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/316.html [cite]]

==Page 32==

'''Second Corinthians''' 
This exchange between Vibe and Ipsow refers specifically to 2 Corinthians 11:19 -- For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
[http://www.kingjamesversionofthebible.com/47-secondcorinthians.html [cite]]

'''Ipsow's response to S. Vibe on lines 21-23( ...in these days need arises directly from criminal acts of the rich)''' can be seen as a direct paraphrase of Ch. 5 of the book of James:
Now listen you rich.. you have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! the wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields cry out against you... you have lived in luxury and fattened yourself in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed innocent men ... James 5

==Page 33==

'''"Old Zip Coon"''' 
"Old Zip Coon" dates from as early as 1834 and is considered the original name for the 19th-century American folk song, 'Turkey in the Straw'. [[Old Zip Coon | lyrics]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw Wikipedia] See also [http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/Amsong59.htm] and [http://www.csufresno.edu:80/folklore/ballads/RJ19258.html]. 
The word "coon" may originate in America as a derogatory name for a Negro, but it was current in England too (therefore not "for an African-American"). For other occurrences of the word, with show business associations in every case, see text and annotations: [[#Page_48|page 48]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424.]]
:In this contributor's boyhood, a brand of chewing tobacco heavily advertised on East Tennessee radio and television used the tune in its jingle, with lyrics close to:
<blockquote>If you like a spicy taste 
Every morning, night and noon, 
Then you're bound to like the taste 
When you chew Red Coon.</blockquote>
:The package at this time portrayed a raccoon, but it's possible a different image had come before.

'''Dr. Tesla''' 
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), American inventor. He was born in Croatia of Serbian parents. He studied at Graz (Austria), Prague and Paris. He discovered (1881) principle of rotating magnetic field, basis of practically all alternating-current (AC) machinery. Between 1882-1884 he was an engineer in Paris (1882-84) and constructed his first induction motor (1883). He emigrated to the United States (1884, naturalized in 1889). Worked for Thmoas Edison (1884-85) but left the Edison Works at Menlo Park (Edison opposed to AC idea) to concentrate on his own inventions, which include improved dynamos, transformers, electric bulbs, wireless communication (1897) and the high-frequency coil which bears his name. (Cf [[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Tesla].)

<div id="rewrite">'''violate . . . the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be''' 
Notice what he ''doesn't'' say: the principles of the free market, the essence of the capitalist economic system. As if modern history has already been written and such research would somehow undermine it.</div>

'''Sloane Lab''' 
Completed in 1912, was the gift of Henry T. Sloane, BA 1866, and William D. Sloane, MA HON. 1889. Of Longmeadow stone, it is Collegiate Gothic in style. Charles C. Haight was the architect. (An underground addition was constructed in 1958 to house a Van de Graaff machine-now removed. The John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc., and the U.S. Public Health Service financed it. Sloane Lab was the first University constructed on the Hillhouse Estate (less the three acres adjoining Sachem’s Wood). The property was a gift in 1910 of Mrs. Russell Sage, and called Pierson Sage Square. The University had wanted to acquire the land to develop into a turn-of-the-century “science park”. The well-known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead advised in the land’s development. [217 Prospect Street]
[http://www.facilities.yale.edu/campus/Building1.asp?lstBldg=1075 [cite]] and [http://www.facilities.yale.edu/images/BFS/1075.jpg [photo]].

Interestingly, Frederick Law Olmstead was also pivital in the development of the grounds for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His famous "Wooded Isle" remains a centerpiece in Chicago's Jackson Park. [http://www.hydepark.org/parks/jpac/jpkhistoryandfair.htm [link]] and
[http://www.hydepark.org/parks/pics/laggen4.JPG [photo]].

For a more detailed account of Olmstead's landscape architecture as it relates to the 1893 World's Fair, see Erik Larson's ''The Devil in the White City''.

:These would be anachronistic, but as the note for p29 above mentions, a lab existed by 1882.

'''World-System''' 
Dr. Tesla's idea of providing electrical power that anyone could tap in for free alludes the birth of wireless internet before being monopolized by b(p)ig companies and corporate greed.

==Page 34==

'''the most terrible weapon the world has seen . . . rational systems of control''' 
This statement defines the threat—as the plutocrats see it—of free power (anarchy) and their justification for bending government and every other compelling force to stamp it out.

'''out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all''' 
Vibe quotes Thomas Hobbes, who in ''Leviathan'' (1651) described the primitive state of the human race as ''bellum omnium contra omnes,'' the war of all against all, which was ended only by the creation of the State. Note the change of "war" to "anarchy."

'''Pierpont''' 
John Pierpont Morgan I (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker, who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation.
[...]
In 1900, Morgan financed inventor Nikola Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower with $150,000 for experiments in radio. Tesla was unsuccessful and, in 1904, Morgan pulled out. Later, Tesla created an AC generator
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan [cite]]

'''non-linear phenomena of scale''' 
Linear scaling means, for example, store twice as much charge, get twice as much voltage. An instance of behavior becoming nonlinear is when air insulation breaks down (arcs, lightning); here adding charge may lead to a ''decrease'' in voltage.

'''Somble, Strool & Fleshway''' 
Law firms in Pynchon have such charming names; compare Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus, and Short in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] or Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49'']. This one has more of a Dickensian sound. Somble could be a portmanteau of ''somber'' and ''tremble'' or ''some bull''; Strool, perhaps, of ''strait'' (= narrow) and ''cruel,'' or ''stool'' and ''drool''. "Fleshway" might suggest a reference to Samuel Butler's ''The Way of All Flesh,'' which was not published until 1903, but it seems more likely to go back to [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20041027.shtml a biblical phrase] associated with death.

Using the onomatapeia technique such as in the ''Gravity's Rainbow'' law firm, we start to get 'Some Bull, is ('t) Drool And.......Help needed! How about "some bull's strool and fleshway." Strool being the portmanteau of stool and drool, and fleshway being the meaty part of the flushway (g.i. tract, anus) -- you know, something like bullshit with the consitency of diarrhea.

Incidentally, Strool is an actual surname as well as the name of a town in South Dakota.

By the way, Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (see "all against all" entry toward the top of this page) is also the source of Salitieri et al. ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," describing the life of human beings in their primitive state). 

'''vestiary''' 
Of, or relating to, clothing.

==Page 36==

'''Fairgoers would see the ship overhead and yet not see it''' 
Useful property for a surveillance platform.

'''Lew Basnight''' 
"Bas" is French for "low", though "bas nuit" means nothing in French.

A detective named 'Lew' reminds us (who is "us"?) of Ross Macdonald's character Lew Archer which in turn recalls another detective, Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade in San Francisco detective agency Spade & Archer. This may be a bad pun on 'lube-ass night' and also might refer to the incident causing Lew to be shunned by his peers.

[[image:beaver-on-the-brain.jpg|thumb|Beaver on the Brain T-Shirt|right]]Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, working a whole sexual angle, naming his character after the phrase "BAS night," meaning a boys' night out, "BAS" being an acronym for "Bitches Ain't Shit" from the [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drdre/bitchesaintshit.html "song" by Dr. Dre] (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). And, hey, Lew meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie Shaft? Twat crossed w/clit? A-and isn't that tetractys an inverted beaver?), where he meets Yashmeen, a ''very'' sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode ([[ATD 171-198#Page 183|p. 183]]) (Beavers, fercrissakes!). Perhaps something worth following up ... or not!

It is possible Basnight is an Americanization of the German "Fasnacht". "Fastnacht or Fasnacht is the pre-Lenten carnival in Alemannic folklore in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and western Austria. It is also known in parts of Pennsylvania Dutch Country as Fauschnaut Day and is celebrated on the day before Ash Wednesday, or the last Tuesday before Lent." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasnacht]

"A likely derivation is from PIE pwo- "purify" (cognate to pava-mana), or alternatively connected with Middle High German vaselen "prosper, bud" and interpreted as a fertility rite."

Fasnacht Day is known in English as Shrove Tuesday. "The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday] All of this seems to tally well with the Basnight character.

Another pun theory: on page 38, Lew is described as being in an ignorance "black as night." This can be abbreviated to "Basnight."
Lew is pronounced "loo," which of course is the British toilet.
Lew Basnight then means, "toilet, black as night." Just a thought...

'''White City Investigations''' 
Since the White City dates from 01 May 1893, this ought to be later.

The name recalls the White Visitation of [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. Any connection?

==Page 37==
'''fictitiousness''' 
On this and the previous page, there is a question raised of whether the Chums are fictional. Or it could be saying that such fantastical sights as the airship are easy to miss at the fair.

It seems more likely that the comparison here is simply between that of the fair, a small, self-contained world of marvels (like all World's Fairs) and the "real world" outside its gates.

There is lots more going on (and it's ''lots'' more interesting). Consider these passages on pages 36-37:
*the . . . celebration possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and agency
*The harsh nonfictional world waited outside the White City's limits
*he (Lew) had not . . . heard of the Chums of Chance
*every boy knows the Chums of Chance
*you're not storybook characters. . . . Are you?
Too much back-and-forth about fiction to be '''just''' about the exposition and the real world. Some premises that are implicit here:
*The Chums know that they live in literature whether they have a "real" existence or not.
*They know their books are popular with an audience of boys. (Lindsay is surprised that Lew didn't read them earlier, not that he isn't reading them now.)
*Lew doesn't regard objective evidence (they are standing before him, he's ascended in their ship) as sufficient to rule out ambiguity (". . . Are you?").
*The lads are able to experience and act only in a quasi-fictitious environment. Off the fairgrounds (in the WCI office), Randolph gives nothing but answers scripted for him by National.
All this suggests that even the Chums aren't sure on what level they exist. They definitely have adventures, as recorded in their books, but they don't seem to have adventures ''not'' contained in the novels.
What will happen if they come to the end of a ''Chums'' book while we are still reading ''AtD''?

'''No more than Wyatt Earp or Nellie Bly''' 
See the next two entries. Earp had a "real" life but people remember him chiefly because of stories written about him (and by him through ghostwriters, [http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/zpub2000/sfentries&cmd=list&range=0,50&Title~=E&cmd=all&Id=98 link 1], [http://www.ferncanyonpress.com/tombston/robbery.shtml link 2]). Bly entertained masses of people by having adventures and then writing about them. Each "lived" through a body of literature.

'''Wyatt Earp''' 
(1848–1929), was a teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, and saloon-keeper in the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to Alaska. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp Wikipedia]

'''Nellie Bly''' 
(1864-1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Wikipedia]

'''Regarding Lew Basnight's malady...''' 
Again, there seems to be a character with a neurological illness; in this case it is presented as amnesia, but seizures also result in "lost time". (See comments on Miles' "electricity coming on" on page 24.) Such maladies are more common than one supposes, and can offer a glimpse of other-worldliness akin to that of hallucinogenics, and epileptics have, at times, been considered to have access to past or future lives.
:OR it could be the case that Lew has fallen through a crack in time-space and entered a parallel universe; in the previous universe (which he simply remembers as the past), he had not done anything wrong, which explains his perplexity. The same might be the case with Miles, which would be why he did not expect baskets of crockery near his feet. Such moving among worlds is a thread in this work.

'''making a point of pronouncing his name disrespectfully''' 
The only way it could be done is, apparently, by saying Lube Ass Night. Well, that or tone of voice.

'''the Upstate-Downstate Beast''' 
Illinois is one of three states with an Upstate, though one of them doesn't use the term Downstate (South Carolina divides itself into Upstate and Lowcountry). The nickname points to a traveling man, perhaps. "Moral horror," "denounced," "revulsion" probably fit with many crimes, though most of those would have led to a prison sentence and we don't have any information of Lew's serving time.

'''"Although the longer a fellow's name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from non-fiction."''' 
May express Pynchon's reaction to the press' treatment of him over the years. In 1964, when Pynchon heard that the ''New York Herald Tribune'' was writing an article about him, Pynchon wrote to his agent that he assumed the piece "will be riddled with the same lies, calumnies and all-around knavish disregard for my privacy" as previous articles. ("Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask," ''New York Times,'' 4 Mar 1998).

'''Wensleydale''' 
A type of cheese made in Yorkshire, England.

==Page 38==

'''"You have destroyed your name."''' 
Wensleydale using very strong language. He doesn't say "destroyed your reputation" or "discredited your name" but "''destroyed'' your name." Does anyone else see this as suggesting Lew's name was not Lew Basnight before his sin?

'''to plead with him to come back''' 
A strange response, that Troth should ask the Upstate-Downstate Beast to return to her. You would think she'd prefer him as far away as he could get.

'''one of your other wives''' 
A direct reference to Lew's sin, or is Troth just pelting Lew with anything that's in reach?

==Page 39==

'''kazoos''' 
This silly instrument appears in several Pynchon novels.

'''slow ritual movement''' 
Maybe tai chi, or anachronistic Gurdjieffian dance?

'''Drave''' 
A noun meaning, according to the OED, a "fishing expedition in which several men take part, each supplying a net and receiving a share of the profits made. Later, A haul (of fish); also, a shoal." There is also a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drave Drave river] in south central Europe, though there seems to be no textual evidence to support this association.

'''Saratoga chips''' 
Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs, NY, and were often called Saratoga chips in the 19th century.

'''Esthonia Hotel''' 
How the country Estonia was spelled in English during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Atonia is a lack of normal muscle tension, but also, "A frightening form of paralysis that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, most often upon falling asleep or waking up. Commonly called sleep paralysis, the condition is due to an ill-timed disconnection between the brain and the body." [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9811 Definition] This could mean that the hotel in question is nothing more than an internal hallucination of Basnight's, further suggesting that his problem is one of neurological rather than simply moral or spiritual cause.

'''''liable for criminal penalties''''' 
Law and the legal profession so far appear in AtD more than any other Pynchon novel (perhaps save ''The Crying of Lot 49''), and so far, like here, in a negative or confusing light. Perhaps Pynchon sees law as part of the general establishment the novel seems to criticize/oppose.

==Page 40==

'''lofty regions no high-iron pioneer had yet dared''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainwright_Building In the early 1890s] anything taller than about 10 stories would have qualified.

'''remembrance stick''' 
Similar to keisaku in Zen Buddhism, an attempt by a sensei to alert students to their mindlessness in zazen (sitting meditation), usually administered by a stick. An English translation is stick of compassion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyosaku [Wikipedia]]

Lew's performance of commonplace and strange chores is also similar to the way Zen training can proceed for novitiates.

==Page 41==

'''you keep bouncing free. Avoiding penance and thereby definition''' 
It is hard to tie Drave down philosophically. No connection between sin and penance, penance as destiny, penance happens or doesn't, and now this idea that penance ''defines'' one's existence.

==Page 42==

'''Spring arrived''' 
We've seen Lew pretty well through a year: summertime (p. 38) when Troth followed him to Chicago, autumn (p. 40) when he checked in at the Esthonia, winter (p. 41) as his bank account starved, now in the spring his moment of grace.

'''scorcher cap''' 
The cap of an early bicycling enthusiast. According to [http://www.velorution.biz/?p=1288 this site]:

:"In […]1892 [… a] bicyclist to be considered genuine had to be dressed in bicycle clothes. A man had to wear bicycle pants which were baggy at the top and tight to the legs below. Then he had to have bicycle socks and shoes. The shoes were made of canvass. Then he had to have a loose fitting grey colored short which we would designate now as a sport shirt. Then on his head he had to wear a tight fitting cap with a long bill in front, the longer the better up to a certain ceiling length. With this outfit and a bicycle with drop handlebars he was ready to appear in public as a real cyclist. If he could make 20 miles an hour on a good track he was called a 'scorcher,' the idea being that he was going so fast that he would scorch at least the end of his nose if nothing else."

'''shirtwaists with huge shoulders''' 
[[image:shirtwaist.jpg|thumb|caption|Shirtwaists|150px|right]]Fashionable the year of the Fair, the shirtwaist is a dress with a bodice (waist) like a tailored shirt and an attached straight or full skirt, the huge shoulders being the sort of "puffy" look of the sleeves. They are now called blouses. Compare Chevrolette McAdoo's outfit, [[ATD_26-56#Page 26|p. 26]].

'''He understood that things were exactly what they were.''' 
This sentence sums up the entire experience at the Esthonia hotel, which seems to be a Zen-like initiation. Here, Lew Basnight seems to have attained some form of enlightenment, and the description ("a condition...which he later came to think of as grace"), along with this sentence, are almost textbook examples of Zen enlightenment. No lights flash, no changes are seen; one merely understands that things are what they are. After this experience, he leaves the hotel, and no longer needs to be there. He then embarks on his new career, in part because of his extreme ability to notice minute details; something that he was not said to have had before.
:The sentence can also serve as a guide to readers of ''AtD.'' Even when it is tempting to speculate that "this paragraph is about Richard Nixon" or protest that "you can't see Sirius on a summer evening," it is worth the effort to let the text mean what it means.

==Page 43==

'''transfigured''' 
In Lew's time of grace, he shows a changed face.

'''leisurely rips through the fabric of the day''' 
See below

==Page 44==

'''He had learned to step to the side of the day.''' 
Through the book there are juxtapositions of things with and against the day (the 'title motif'). Here, we are told that Lew has learned to step "to the side" of the day. Possibly he is able to enter another plane? This is possible considering the dream-like hotel sequence on previous pages.
:I think that the "other plane" interpretation is a bit of a stretch. The passage seems to imply that Lew has learned to will and maintain a degree of detachment from his surroundings, perhaps a relinquishment of his perceived control over events or his attempts to control them.
: -- I don't see it as a stretch if we accept that he now recognizes that there are alternate, parallel, universes.

'''it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts''' 
The quotes here may be to distinguish the fact that while technically living in Chicago, Lew sometimes exists or moves within a place or plane that others also living there don't see, or have access to.
:Yes, or universes rather than planes.

==Page 45==

'''two-headed eagle''' 
As Holy Roman Emperor, the Austro-Hungarian emperor bore a two-headed eagle (each head crowned) as part of his arms. The Tsar of Russia also used a two-headed eagle, but it was triply crowned (one crown between the heads). The Serbian two-headed eagle appeared on a shield with one crown above it, and the Montenegrin one had a single crown between the heads. Other details of the envelope would serve to disambiguate.

'''Trabants''' 
"Trabanten" (German for 'satellites') originally - during the Thirty Years' War - were lightly armed foot soldiers; later this term was used for servants and/or bodyguards of high-ranking persons.

'''"have a lawyer explain civil liability to you"''' 
Again, law.

'''gumshoe''' 
Perhaps a bit too early to use this term; the Dictionary of American Slang dates it as "by 1906".

'''a couple a thousand hunkies''' 
"Hunkies" was a slur against Hungarians and other eastern Europeans. The word may have morphed into "honkies."

'''Francis Ferdinand''' 
This is indeed the same Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in 1914 triggered World War I. At the time of his appearance in ''AtD'', he would have been 30, and his two passions throughout young adulthood and his 20s were travel and hunting (it is estimated that he shot more than 5,000 deer in his lifetime). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Wikipedia entry]. He did indeed attend the Chicago Exposition. [http://columbus.iit.edu/bookfair/ch27.html]

Click for [[The Habsburgs in Against the Day]]...

See the annotation about Austria-Hungary on the next page.

'''shive artist''' 
Someone proficient with a knife (shive=knife or razor).

'''to rewrite history''' 
Hold on, '''re'''write? As Vibe did on [[#rewrite|page 33,]] Privett seems to reason that history has already been decided and some action would change it rather than generate a valid new history.

==Page 46==

'''"staff," a mixture of plaster and hemp fibers''' 
[http://ftp.apci.net/~truax/1904wf/WF_Mem-Staff.htm Pix and info... ]

[http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html One source] says it was jute, not hemp.

According to [http://www.buildingstonemagazine.com/summer-06/historic.html ''Building Stone'' magazine,] the buildings were meant to be painted in bright colors, but the Chicago climate put the kibosh on that. Even keeping them white called for continuous repainting.

The Museum of Science and Industry is the only structure surviving from the exposition. Built as the Palace of Fine Arts, it started out faced in staff but was later [http://www.aviewoncities.com/chicago/museumofscienceandindustry.htm rebuilt] to the original exterior design in limestone and marble.

'''to counterfeit some deathless white stone''' 

Given the many references throughout ''AtD'' to "white" and "stones" to ''counterfeit'' a ''deathless'' white stone seems portentous.

'''"In Austria," the Archduke was explaining, ". . . the Chicago Stockyards might possibly be rented out . . . for a weekend's amusement"''' 

Pynchon continues his linking of the Stockyard killing-floor with the genocidal horrors of the 20th Century, it seems. See above. Heidegger (sic) made this connection somewhere and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maxwell_Coetzee J.M Coetze's] novel ''Elizabeth Costello'' uses it in a key chapter that was published separately.

'''beaters who drive the animals toward the hunters . . . waiting to shoot them''' 
Skillful use of ambiguity: waiting to shoot the animals or the beaters?

'''"Hungarians occupy the lowest level of brute existence"''' 
Even if the quote might be fictive, the Archduke's characterization is close to the point. Franz Ferdinand, a dour reactionary with aggressive ideas in foreign policy, had the reputation of an avowed Hungarophobe. The Compromise of 1867 created a dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which the Archduke sought to transform in a "trialistic" way, giving an enivsioned southern Slav union of Croatia (which was united in a sub-confederation with Hungary), Bosnia and Dalmatia a status similar to that of the Kingdom of Hungary. Note how the Czechs, a population about twice as large as southwestern Slavs, were omitted from this scheme. The idea was evidently to weaken the Hungarian establishment, and recentralize power in Vienna.

'''Mannlicher''' 
A double-barreled rifle designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher. It is reported that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had several of these made special for him.

Interestingly enough, the rifle is also mentioned in ''Green Hills of Africa'' and ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'' by Ernest Hemingway, who used it extensively on hunting.

Franz was eventually assassinated in Sarajevo. Coincidentally (?), fellow assassinee JFK was initially claimed to have been a victim of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher rifle.

==Page 47==

'''K&K Special Security''' 
"K&K" stands for "Kaiserlich und Königlich," German for "imperial and royal (kingly)," to indicate the Austrian two titles of the ruler of the Dual Monarchy: King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserlich_und_königlich Wikipedia entry].

'''Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit''' 
This is not a German word as far as I know and most likely not even a degenerate Habsburg or one of his officers would have used it (but then I haven't read Franz Ferdinand's account of his travels...). Sounds more like some Babelfish machine translation of "pastry-depravity" to me. I wonder what the German translator will make of this. My guess is, s/he will not make a "typical German" combined noun out of it, but turn the phrase to be able to use an adverb like "mehlspeisennarrisch" instead (what with in Austria and Bavaria there is a word for (mostly sweet) pastry: "Mehlspeise" (literally "flour-meal), and "narrisch" is Austrian/Viennese for being (slightly) mad). But then, of course, there might be a pun intended I as a bad english-speaker just dont get. Maybe via the pronounciation? Check out this [http://www.dict.cc/?s=Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit dictionary], head for "continue searching" and press "voice output" - voila, thats what "Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit" sounds like.

The term probably is made up, but the meaning is more like "shameful addiction to cookie dough." In the context of detectives, what may be happening here is this: The Austrians have heard the canard that American policemen are addicted to doughnuts, but they misunderstand both ''doughnut'' and ''addicted.''

Another possibility: Austrians have read that American detectives will do anything for dough.

'''Boll Weevil Lounge''' 
The boll weevil, a destructive cotton pest, first arrived in America (via Mexico) in 1892, only one year before the opening section of ATD. It is a fitting name for a "Negro Bar" as the boll weevil is the subject of dozens of blues songs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil [Wikipedia]]

1893 is too soon for the songs and probably for the lounge too. Cotton was still king in the South; the big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_States_and_International_Exposition_%281895%29 Atlanta exposition] was two years in the future, and the economic dislocation had not properly begun. The boll weevil songs date from the teens-20s and later.

'''...the only place in Chicago a man could find a decent orange phosphate...''' 
A reference to the modern stereotype that black people like orange soda, here called a phosphate.

==Page 48==

'''Wassermelone''' 
Watermelon; another black stereotype...

'''grip cars''' 
The lead cars in cable-car systems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_City_Railway [Wikipedia]]

'''''deine Mutti'', as you would say''' 
Franz Ferdinand is attempting to engage the patrons of the Boll Weevil Lounge in a game of "the dozens", an insult contest in which opponents make fun of each other's mothers. "The dozens" has its origins in the New Orleans slave trade. As with the boll weevil, "the dozens" is closely associated with blues music. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dozens [Wikipedia]]

'''the World's Fair, not the World's Ugly''' 
A fairly sophisticated pun, if F.F.'s English is so rudimentary.

'''''...'st los, Hund?''''' 
German for "'s up, dog?"

'''All Pimps Look Alike to Me''' 
An early rag by Ernest Hogan was entitled All Coons Look Alike to Me; "Hogan was evidently not the originator of the song's lyrics, having appropriated them after hearing a pianist in a Chicago salon playing a song titled "All Pimps Look Alike to Me"". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hogan See this article.] 
For more "coon" references see text and annotations: [[#Page_33|page 33]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and especially [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424]].

''Who's usin' who? What should we do? Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too'' 
(Icky Thump - White Stripes) / not relevant to this entry but worth listening to.

'''scapegrace''' 
Scoundrel.

'''And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!''' 
WWI?

Was Franz Ferdinand some sort of ruthless cosmopolitan at the time being? You can really see it from his ATD passages.

'''keester''' 
Buttocks.

==Page 49==

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

'''At first Lew took it for a church''' 
This could be an allusion to the film, ''On The Waterfront'', and a similar scene when Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is sent by Johnny Friendly and Co. to eavesdrop on a meeting being held in a church by local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) along with workers from the docks who are fed up with Friendly and the Mob, especially in light of a recent death. Social themes of film seem apt as well. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_waterfront].

Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich)incidentally was a product of this milieu, born in Chicago in 1912 to a Serb steelworker father and Czech seamstress mother. The Sekulovich family hails from Herzegovina.

'''Welsbach mantles''' 
One of the most important advances in the history of lighting, the Welsbach mantle (for a period so ubiquitous it became more commonly known simply as 'gas mantle') was first sold commercially in 1892 and quickly spread throughout Europe. It remained an important part of street lighting until the widespread introduction of electric lighting in the early 1900s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle Wikipedia entry].

'''Reverend Moss Gatlin''' 
A fictional character. Is he connected to Rev. Cherrycoke? They are both Reverends with strong political opinions and you can hear Pynchon's voice here very strong.

Possible allusion to Reverend Fr. John M. Corridan, the real-life counterpart of Father Barry in ''On The Waterfront''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Corridan Wikipedia]

Some real, or anyway nonfictional, anarchist preachers:
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard107.html Thomas Olney,] 17th-century Baptist anarchist who was influential in Rhode Island
*[http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol055/96047023.html Rudolf Rocker] (1873-1958), nicknamed the "anarchist rabbi"
*[http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis,] Dutch minister who came to anarchism in 1897
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/critics/mckinley/chap4.html Albert Dahlquist and Joseph A. Wildman,] caught up in persecutions after the McKinley assassination (Dahlquist was nearly lynched; Wildman was tarred and feathered)
*[http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301208.shtml Father Frank Morales,] participant in Portland anti-globalization demonstrations
*[http://www.deadanarchists.org/anton.html Hugh O. Pentecost,] who in 1889 was slated to address a meeting in commemoration of the Haymarket; Philadelphia authorities suppressed the gathering

'''fascinators''' 
Hair adornments. [http://www.ribbonsandpearls.co.uk/catalogue/fascinators/fascinator_hair_accessories_intro.htm [pix]]

'''bearing the insults of the day''' 
See notes on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''Blake's Jerusalem''' 
The original lines From William Blake's poem are:

I will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England's green and pleasant land.

'''Fierce as the winter's tempest . . . Death's for the bought and sold!''' 
This lyric does not come up in a Google search. It doesn't flow like any other lyric in Pynchon but reads like a rather good hymn text. No variations in the meter, no words broken for the sake of rhyme, no punctuation to show lengthened or chopped syllables. And yet thematically it is a seamless fit with the text around it. Are the lines original in ''AtD,'' or can their source be identified?

==Page 50==

'''Picardy third''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy_third Wikipedia entry]

==Page 51==

'''deadfalls''' 
Low points where refuse collects? Cf. Pynchon's story, Low-Lands?[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deadfalls [def]]

'''prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate''' 
Coupled with the cover blurb Pynchon wrote: "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction." Could ''Against the Day'' be Pynchon's prophecy of a future America?

[[image:we_never_sleep.jpg|thumb|175px|right]]'''The Unsleeping Eye''' 
Reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency. Pinkerton's National Detective Agency had a logo with an eye in the center, and below it read, "We Never Sleep." See also [[ATD_1-25#Page_13|page 13]].

'''bay rum''' 
A type of cologne or after-shave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_rum Wikipedia article]

==Page 52==

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Lew Basnight's temporary presence on the airship may be the first clue as to why it's called ''Inconvenience''. Perhaps his growing sympathy for the anarchists will lead to greater involvement by him, the Chums, or at least the book in portraying the anarchist movement, which is viewed as an inconvenience to the ruling classes. Pynchon may consider his novel's message, similarly, as an inconvenient truth about America's past, present or both.

:I thought it was just a polysyllable that sounds stately but means the opposite.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:18, 5 December 2006 (PST)

In ''Mason & Dixon'', the willful reality of other people are referred to as inconveniences more than once.

'''the whiteness of the place nearly unbearable''' 
Causing an effect something like snow blindness.

'''some weeks till the fair closes''' 
30 October 1893.

'''our future's all a blank''' 
Whoever the Chums get their orders from, they have not received any new ones yet. They look ahead and see a blank page.

'''Freddie Turner''' 
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 - 1932) was, with Charles A. Beard, the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He is best known for ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', an essay which describes his views on how the idea of the frontier shaped the American character, and how the frontier drove American history and America's westward expansion. Excerpt: "In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization."
[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html eText here...]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Wikipedia]

==Page 53==

'''Here's where the Trail comes to an end at last''' 
With the advent of the railroad, the West changed dramatically. Chicago became the stockyards and slaughterhouse of America, and cowboys only funneled their cattle in that direction, no longer simply following them on the range or leading them to more local places of slaughter. The cowboy had become a cog in the wheel of a mechanism of death.

'''Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches''' 
Mentioned in 1911 Britannica article 'Slaughter-house' [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Slaughter-house [etext]]

'''charabanc''' 
An open-topped bus for tourists.

'''"The frontier ends and disconnection begins"''' 
Here, the free cowboy myth of Buffalo Bill's show is replaced by the grim reality of the stockyard worker.

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

'''How the dickens do I know?''' 
A possible reference to the novels of Charles Dickens, who critiques in such works as ''Hard Times'' (1854) the onset of urban decay, and the choked living and working conditions of the proletariat as the Industrial Revolution steams onward. 
Or it may just be a standard euphemism; polite speakers were enjoined not to name the Devil.

'''hob-raising years''' 
Hell-raising years; his early years. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hob Definition of "hob".]

==Page 54==

'''where you knew you could stand and piss would flow two ways at once.''' 
The Professor is talking about growing up in Colorado, where the Continental Divide passes. It would be logical to suggest that, at the precise location of this divide, piss would indeed flow both east and west.
:For Easterners at least, it's a well-known tourist ritual to pee right on the line.

The best place to do this, for tourists, is at Cache La Poudre Lake, headwaters of the Colorado River on Trail Ridge Road (US 34) in Rocky Mountain National Park—it is exactly on the Divide, and water exits to East and West, Atlantic and Pacific.

'''into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well''' 
Describing Lew's movement now, but a few pages previously that of the stock at the slaughterhouse.

'''Cheerfulness . . . a precarious commodity''' 
The original narrator of the Chums passages has definitely been pushed aside now. They seem to be in a totally different book.

==Page 55==

'''. . . they continued in a fragmented reverie which, . . . often announced some change in the works''' 
Good to notice when the Chums get like this again: i.e. unfocused, depressed, without direction, it may lead to patterns in the plot.
:No Fair, no orders, no adventures: The Chums are between books!

'''Speculation began to fill the day.''' 
See note on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''the ill-famed Hawk''' 
In deepening autumn it is ''rehearsing'' "swift descent, merciless assault, rapture of souls"; at the end of the passage "the temperature head[s] down." The Hawk appears to be a metaphor for winter or its storms. ([http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_hawk/ possible definition?]) 
:That is pretty conclusive. ''Hawk'' an established and documented metaphor for the winter wind.
The Hawk is also one of the ubiquitous birds of prey in ATD. The words showing its lethal effect and the drop in temperature are Pynchon themes
for evil. Evil comes from the lands of low temperatures. See GR.

In addition to these meanings, TRP also demonstrates local knowledge here, as the Hawk is the name of a specific wind in Chicago. The Hawk is the name of a northeast wind, one that comes off Lake Michigan usually in the spring. A meteorologist will tell you that a northeast wind is somewhat unusual, contrary to (or against) the prevailing winds that generally come from the west. The effects of the Hawk can be seen at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where centerfield is on the northeast corner of Sheffield and Waveland. When the Hawk is blowing hits that, given a usual southwest wind, have a chance at being home runs will die in the outfield and are easily caught. The Hawk is a reminder that, though winter has left town, it will be back. The wind has a very particular resonance for a Chicagoan, and it's very impressive that Pynchon, not a native, should make use of it, especially in such an offhand manner.

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

ATD 26-56

2008-10-26T07:22:23Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 39 */ cleanup

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

==Page 26==

'''egret plumes''' 
Some species of egrets were threatened with extinction in the 19th century because their plumes (also called ''aigrettes'') were much used in millinery. Problem is, the egrets grew the showy feathers only in breeding season, so that's when they were killed, hence no little egrets (egretlets?).

'''Little Egypt''' 
was the stage name for two popular exotic dancers, Ashea Wabe who danced at the Seeley banquet at the 1893 World's Fair and Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, also performing under the stage name Fatima, appeared at the "Street in Cairo" exhibition on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(dancer) Wikipedia entry] Also a 1961 [[Little_Egypt|song]] by the Coasters.

==Page 27==

'''Bacchanale''' 
From ''Samson et Dalila'', op. 47 (1877) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_and_Delilah_%28opera%29 Wikipedia entry]. Listen to a [http://themodernword.com/wiki/bacchanale.mp3 30 second MP3 sample]

"Bacchanalia" describes not just the music but the dance too, in this context.

'''from here to Timbuctoo''' 
Now known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu Timbuktu,] a standard figure of speech for the other end of Creation.

'''Maxim whirling machines...''' 
This paragraph describes a number of real flying apparati: [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Aero_Oct1893.html This article] from October 1893 describes the Maxim whirling machine and others.

'''ornithurgy''' 
Invented word?

My guess is that it signifies something like bird-works: 
ornith- variant of ornitho; [New Latin orntho-, from Greek, from orns, ornth-, bird;] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ornitho-] 
-urgy [New Latin -rgia, from Greek -ourgi, from -ourgos, working, from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/-urgy]

'''Dally''' 
Merle's relationship with Dally is reminiscent of Ryan and Tatum O'Neal's characters in the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film, "Paper Moon". Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 28==

'''''Imbottigliata!''''' Italian for "bottled".

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
The Lolita motif is common in Pynchon's works. Other Lolitas include Bianca in [[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow.'']

:Dahlia is four or five years old! She is not a Lolita motif here. Lolita was twelve and Humbert was sick.

::Too early in the novel to jump into such conclusions.

'''in Randolph's face a degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic''' 
Randolph "froze" previously, on page 12; evidently this is a trait already established in the ''Chums'' novels.

'''fulminate me if she ain't''' 
What an odd turn of phrase: set me off explosively.

'''this Trouvé-screw unit over here''' 
Gustave Trouvé built advanced machinery from the 1860s to the 1890s; [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Screws_May1892.html his work on airscrews] was pivotal, and he also invented [http://www.electricrecordteam.com/history.htm the outboard motor.] Before Trouvé's design studies, propulsion in the air used sail-rotors like windmills or depended on slightly modified marine propellers.

==Page 29==

'''Midway Plaisance''' 
The big central concourse of the White City. "Plaisance" is an alternative (or Frenchified) spelling of "pleasance," an esthetically appealing spot. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this very good site] on the Columbian Exposition, the Midway Plaisance lent its name to the midways of circuses ever after.

'''a l'étouffée''' 
French, meaning braised. So, braised alligator meat. Braised food, for instance crawfish, is a culinary specialty of New Orleans.

In the New Orleans context, a recipe is pertinent because "braise" doesn't exactly tell the story of this Cajun preparation. The following is drastically abridged from, of all things, the obituary of Joe Daole ("Joe Dale") in the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' April 21, 2007:
:Saute onion, green pepper, celery, parsley and garlic in a great deal of butter. Add peeled and chopped tomatoes and seasonings. Simmer, covered, 5-10 minutes. Make a dark brown roux with oil and flour; add to vegetables. Add seafood stock and bring to a boil. Add peeled shrimp or crawfish tail meat and cook just 2-3 minutes. Serve over rice.

'''Sloane Laboratory''' 
Yale's physics lab built 1882. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_33|page 33]].

'''Professor Gibbs''' 
Josiah Williard Gibbs (1839-1903), American mathematical physicist. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1854 he went to Yale and won prizes for excellence in Latin and mathematics. He undertook research in engineering and received his Ph.D in 1863, the first doctorate in engineering to be conferred in the US. From 1866 to 1869 Gibbs studies in Europe - first in Paris, then in Berlin and finally in Heidelberg. He was professor at Yale from 1871 to 1903. He contributed substantially to the study of thermodynamics, and his most important work, ''On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances'' (1876 and 1878) and his "phase rule" established him as a founder of physical chemistry. Gibbs' work on vector analysis was also of major importance in pure mathematics. Gibbs was one of the greatest American scientists in the 19th century. ([http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Gibbs.html Gibbs].)

'''De Forest''' 
Lee De Forest (1873-1961), American inventor. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and educated at Yale and Chicago. A pioneer of radio, he introduced the grid into the therm-ionic valve, and invented the audion (1907), feedback circuit (1912) and the four-electrode valve. He involved in first news by radio (1916). He also did much early work on sound reproduction and on television. He patented over 300 inventions in wireless telegraphy, radio, telephony, talking pictures, high-speed facsimile transmission, television, radiotherapy, radar, etc. He was called, sometimes, "the father of radio." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest De Forest].)

'''Kimura''' 
He received his Ph.D degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1896. (Dissertation: ''Studies on General Spherical Functions''.) He published a paper ''On the Nabla of Quaternions'' in ''The Annals of Mathermatics'', Vol 10, No. 1/6 (1895-1896). In 1912, he published a paper called ''One-Waveness in Wireless Telegraphy; Pseudo-Impact Excitation'' in ''Physical Review'' of May 1912. (''Nabla'' is an early name for the "del" operator, symbolized by the inverted Greek letter Δ.)

'''Ray Ipsow''' 
In Latin ''re ipso'' means "the thing itself." "To the thing itself" was the motto and rallying cry of the investigational method known as phenomenology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology Wikipedia entry] developed by Edmund Husserl [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl Wikipedia entry]. As the phrase indicates, it is a plea against abstraction--a theme of GR--- and for reality 'itself'.

'''Outer Indianoplace''' 
Derogatory nickname for Indianapolis.

'''down in New Orleans . . . that Khartoum business''' 
Evidently two Chums of Chance books we didn't know about. Perhaps ''The Chums of Chance and the Voodoo Priest'' and ''The Chums of Chance and the Mussulman Hordes.''

'''Khartoum... Mahdi's army''' 
Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. The Mahdi army refered to here was an Islamic group in the 1880s that advocated a return to strict Islamic values and battled with the government of Khartoum and Egyptian armies.More on these convoluted events at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sudan_(1884-1898) Wikipedia entry].

The concept of the Mahdi is far beyond this one historic event, however.
In point of fact, the U.S. is fighting the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army Mahdi Army] in Iraq right now.

==Page 30==

'''contrary wind . . . Oltre Giubba, instead of down at Alex''' 
From Khartoum you fly north by west to Alexandria. That wind was about as contrary as it could be: from Khartoum to Oltre Giuba is south by east. Now called [http://www.jubaland.org/ Jubaland,] Oltre Giuba (just one B, please, this isn't ''Pagliacci'') is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oltre_Giuba the southwesternmost part of Somalia,] across the Juba River from the rest. Not to be confused with Juba province in southern Sudan.
:Oh, and the Oltre Giuba diversion must have taken place before ''Inconvenience'' was fitted with hydrogen steam power, else she could have flown against the wind.

'''railroad watch''' 
High-quality pocket watch. [http://www.pockethorology.org/Railroad/Railroad.htm [pix and info]]

==Page 31==

'''Scarsdale Vibe''' 
Scarsdale NY boasts that it's Westchester County's wealthiest community, so a 'Scarsdale vibe' implies 'stinking of money'. Vibe is another Pynchon baddie whose last name starts with "V", ''e.g.'', Brock Vond in ''Vineland.''

'''"The Juggernaut"''' 
The name of Vibe's private train derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning "Lord of the Universe" one of the many names of Lord Krishna. "Krishna" itself means "black" or "dark" skinned. British colonial "urban" legend had it that Hindus sought to be crushed under the wheels of giant cars in Krishna's "chariot procession" at Puri as a way of gaining salvation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut see the Wikipedia entry.]

Capitalism has often been described as a juggernaut. One of numerous uses:
"Even as leaders of nation states compete for power and prestige, the juggernaut of capitalism diminishes borders, weakens governments and, eventually," ...
http://www.southpacific.arts.unsw.edu.au/resources/resource_nissology.htm - 
:A leading sociologist, Anthony Giddens, is also responsible for the phrase, "the juggernaut of modernity". See this incredibly relevant definition and analysis of this phrase: "The most defining property of modernity, according to Giddens, is '''that we are disembedded from time and space'''. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved, time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, however, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like, even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge. In pre-modern societies, it were the elders who possessed the knowledge: they were definable in time and space. In modern societies we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong: there's always a risk we have to take. Also the technologies which we use, and which transform constraints into means, hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a 'juggernaut': modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut traveling through space." Wikipedia [[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Giddens]]

'''in disguise . . . bodyguards and secretaries . . . ebony stick''' 
Some great disguise!

'''Foley Walker''' 
"Foley walker" is a term used to indicate a sound-effects expert. Also known as a foley artist [http://www.natf.org/wad/foley.htm [cite]]. One of the foley walker's main jobs is to add the sound of footsteps to movies where required, imitating the way the character would walk. So, a kind of 'stand-in'.

'''Forty-seventh and Ashland''' 
[[image:47th-Ashland.jpg|right|thumb|caption|47th & Ashland Avenue, 1935| 200px]][...] First, the story [...] about Ashland being named for the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire is an urban legend. Ashland Avenue, first known as Reuben Street, was already developed before the fire and was considered the height of suburban living on the West Side in the 1860s.
[http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/ashland_the_great_fire_and_the_ruins_of_chicago/ [cite]] [...] The spread of movie palaces in the automobile age presaged the spread of commercial buildings from the Loop to the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 1930, Marshall Field & Co. had created smaller versions of its downtown store in Evanston and Oak Park, while neighborhood retailers like Goldblatt's and Wieboldt's were moving downtown. Chicago developed regional shopping districts at 47th and Ashland, 63rd and Halsted, Irving Park and Pulaski, and many other locations. Certain areas catered to specialized industries, such as “Automobile Row” on South Michigan Avenue, or the Maxwell Street Market, an open-air European-style market that resisted every effort at modernization until its destruction in the 1990s. [...]
[http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/316.html [cite]]

==Page 32==

'''Second Corinthians''' 
This exchange between Vibe and Ipsow refers specifically to 2 Corinthians 11:19 -- For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
[http://www.kingjamesversionofthebible.com/47-secondcorinthians.html [cite]]

'''Ipsow's response to S. Vibe on lines 21-23( ...in these days need arises directly from criminal acts of the rich)''' can be seen as a direct paraphrase of Ch. 5 of the book of James:
Now listen you rich.. you have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! the wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields cry out against you... you have lived in luxury and fattened yourself in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed innocent men ... James 5

==Page 33==

'''"Old Zip Coon"''' 
"Old Zip Coon" dates from as early as 1834 and is considered the original name for the 19th-century American folk song, 'Turkey in the Straw'. [[Old Zip Coon | lyrics]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw Wikipedia] See also [http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/Amsong59.htm] and [http://www.csufresno.edu:80/folklore/ballads/RJ19258.html]. 
The word "coon" may originate in America as a derogatory name for a Negro, but it was current in England too (therefore not "for an African-American"). For other occurrences of the word, with show business associations in every case, see text and annotations: [[#Page_48|page 48]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424.]]
:In this contributor's boyhood, a brand of chewing tobacco heavily advertised on East Tennessee radio and television used the tune in its jingle, with lyrics close to:
<blockquote>If you like a spicy taste 
Every morning, night and noon, 
Then you're bound to like the taste 
When you chew Red Coon.</blockquote>
:The package at this time portrayed a raccoon, but it's possible a different image had come before.

'''Dr. Tesla''' 
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), American inventor. He was born in Croatia of Serbian parents. He studied at Graz (Austria), Prague and Paris. He discovered (1881) principle of rotating magnetic field, basis of practically all alternating-current (AC) machinery. Between 1882-1884 he was an engineer in Paris (1882-84) and constructed his first induction motor (1883). He emigrated to the United States (1884, naturalized in 1889). Worked for Thmoas Edison (1884-85) but left the Edison Works at Menlo Park (Edison opposed to AC idea) to concentrate on his own inventions, which include improved dynamos, transformers, electric bulbs, wireless communication (1897) and the high-frequency coil which bears his name. (Cf [[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Tesla].)

<div id="rewrite">'''violate . . . the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be''' 
Notice what he ''doesn't'' say: the principles of the free market, the essence of the capitalist economic system. As if modern history has already been written and such research would somehow undermine it.</div>

'''Sloane Lab''' 
Completed in 1912, was the gift of Henry T. Sloane, BA 1866, and William D. Sloane, MA HON. 1889. Of Longmeadow stone, it is Collegiate Gothic in style. Charles C. Haight was the architect. (An underground addition was constructed in 1958 to house a Van de Graaff machine-now removed. The John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc., and the U.S. Public Health Service financed it. Sloane Lab was the first University constructed on the Hillhouse Estate (less the three acres adjoining Sachem’s Wood). The property was a gift in 1910 of Mrs. Russell Sage, and called Pierson Sage Square. The University had wanted to acquire the land to develop into a turn-of-the-century “science park”. The well-known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead advised in the land’s development. [217 Prospect Street]
[http://www.facilities.yale.edu/campus/Building1.asp?lstBldg=1075 [cite]] and [http://www.facilities.yale.edu/images/BFS/1075.jpg [photo]].

Interestingly, Frederick Law Olmstead was also pivital in the development of the grounds for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His famous "Wooded Isle" remains a centerpiece in Chicago's Jackson Park. [http://www.hydepark.org/parks/jpac/jpkhistoryandfair.htm [link]] and
[http://www.hydepark.org/parks/pics/laggen4.JPG [photo]].

For a more detailed account of Olmstead's landscape architecture as it relates to the 1893 World's Fair, see Erik Larson's ''The Devil in the White City''.

:These would be anachronistic, but as the note for p29 above mentions, a lab existed by 1882.

'''World-System''' 
Dr. Tesla's idea of providing electrical power that anyone could tap in for free alludes the birth of wireless internet before being monopolized by b(p)ig companies and corporate greed.

==Page 34==

'''the most terrible weapon the world has seen . . . rational systems of control''' 
This statement defines the threat—as the plutocrats see it—of free power (anarchy) and their justification for bending government and every other compelling force to stamp it out.

'''out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all''' 
Vibe quotes Thomas Hobbes, who in ''Leviathan'' (1651) described the primitive state of the human race as ''bellum omnium contra omnes,'' the war of all against all, which was ended only by the creation of the State. Note the change of "war" to "anarchy."

'''Pierpont''' 
John Pierpont Morgan I (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker, who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation.
[...]
In 1900, Morgan financed inventor Nikola Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower with $150,000 for experiments in radio. Tesla was unsuccessful and, in 1904, Morgan pulled out. Later, Tesla created an AC generator
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan [cite]]

'''non-linear phenomena of scale''' 
Linear scaling means, for example, store twice as much charge, get twice as much voltage. An instance of behavior becoming nonlinear is when air insulation breaks down (arcs, lightning); here adding charge may lead to a ''decrease'' in voltage.

'''Somble, Strool & Fleshway''' 
Law firms in Pynchon have such charming names; compare Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus, and Short in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] or Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49'']. This one has more of a Dickensian sound. Somble could be a portmanteau of ''somber'' and ''tremble'' or ''some bull''; Strool, perhaps, of ''strait'' (= narrow) and ''cruel,'' or ''stool'' and ''drool''. "Fleshway" might suggest a reference to Samuel Butler's ''The Way of All Flesh,'' which was not published until 1903, but it seems more likely to go back to [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20041027.shtml a biblical phrase] associated with death.

Using the onomatapeia technique such as in the ''Gravity's Rainbow'' law firm, we start to get 'Some Bull, is ('t) Drool And.......Help needed! How about "some bull's strool and fleshway." Strool being the portmanteau of stool and drool, and fleshway being the meaty part of the flushway (g.i. tract, anus) -- you know, something like bullshit with the consitency of diarrhea.

Incidentally, Strool is an actual surname as well as the name of a town in South Dakota.

By the way, Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (see "all against all" entry toward the top of this page) is also the source of Salitieri et al. ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," describing the life of human beings in their primitive state). 

'''vestiary''' 
Of, or relating to, clothing.

==Page 36==

'''Fairgoers would see the ship overhead and yet not see it''' 
Useful property for a surveillance platform.

'''Lew Basnight''' 
"Bas" is French for "low", though "bas nuit" means nothing in French.

A detective named 'Lew' reminds us (who is "us"?) of Ross Macdonald's character Lew Archer which in turn recalls another detective, Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade in San Francisco detective agency Spade & Archer. This may be a bad pun on 'lube-ass night' and also might refer to the incident causing Lew to be shunned by his peers.

[[image:beaver-on-the-brain.jpg|thumb|Beaver on the Brain T-Shirt|right]]Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, working a whole sexual angle, naming his character after the phrase "BAS night," meaning a boys' night out, "BAS" being an acronym for "Bitches Ain't Shit" from the [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drdre/bitchesaintshit.html "song" by Dr. Dre] (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). And, hey, Lew meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie Shaft? Twat crossed w/clit? A-and isn't that tetractys an inverted beaver?), where he meets Yashmeen, a ''very'' sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode ([[ATD 171-198#Page 183|p. 183]]) (Beavers, fercrissakes!). Perhaps something worth following up ... or not!

It is possible Basnight is an Americanization of the German "Fasnacht". "Fastnacht or Fasnacht is the pre-Lenten carnival in Alemannic folklore in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and western Austria. It is also known in parts of Pennsylvania Dutch Country as Fauschnaut Day and is celebrated on the day before Ash Wednesday, or the last Tuesday before Lent." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasnacht]

"A likely derivation is from PIE pwo- "purify" (cognate to pava-mana), or alternatively connected with Middle High German vaselen "prosper, bud" and interpreted as a fertility rite."

Fasnacht Day is known in English as Shrove Tuesday. "The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday] All of this seems to tally well with the Basnight character.

Another pun theory: on page 38, Lew is described as being in an ignorance "black as night." This can be abbreviated to "Basnight."
Lew is pronounced "loo," which of course is the British toilet.
Lew Basnight then means, "toilet, black as night." Just a thought...

'''White City Investigations''' 
Since the White City dates from 01 May 1893, this ought to be later.

The name recalls the White Visitation of [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. Any connection?

==Page 37==
'''fictitiousness''' 
On this and the previous page, there is a question raised of whether the Chums are fictional. Or it could be saying that such fantastical sights as the airship are easy to miss at the fair.

It seems more likely that the comparison here is simply between that of the fair, a small, self-contained world of marvels (like all World's Fairs) and the "real world" outside its gates.

There is lots more going on (and it's ''lots'' more interesting). Consider these passages on pages 36-37:
*the . . . celebration possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and agency
*The harsh nonfictional world waited outside the White City's limits
*he (Lew) had not . . . heard of the Chums of Chance
*every boy knows the Chums of Chance
*you're not storybook characters. . . . Are you?
Too much back-and-forth about fiction to be '''just''' about the exposition and the real world. Some premises that are implicit here:
*The Chums know that they live in literature whether they have a "real" existence or not.
*They know their books are popular with an audience of boys. (Lindsay is surprised that Lew didn't read them earlier, not that he isn't reading them now.)
*Lew doesn't regard objective evidence (they are standing before him, he's ascended in their ship) as sufficient to rule out ambiguity (". . . Are you?").
*The lads are able to experience and act only in a quasi-fictitious environment. Off the fairgrounds (in the WCI office), Randolph gives nothing but answers scripted for him by National.
All this suggests that even the Chums aren't sure on what level they exist. They definitely have adventures, as recorded in their books, but they don't seem to have adventures ''not'' contained in the novels.
What will happen if they come to the end of a ''Chums'' book while we are still reading ''AtD''?

'''No more than Wyatt Earp or Nellie Bly''' 
See the next two entries. Earp had a "real" life but people remember him chiefly because of stories written about him (and by him through ghostwriters, [http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/zpub2000/sfentries&cmd=list&range=0,50&Title~=E&cmd=all&Id=98 link 1], [http://www.ferncanyonpress.com/tombston/robbery.shtml link 2]). Bly entertained masses of people by having adventures and then writing about them. Each "lived" through a body of literature.

'''Wyatt Earp''' 
(1848–1929), was a teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, and saloon-keeper in the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to Alaska. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp Wikipedia]

'''Nellie Bly''' 
(1864-1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Wikipedia]

'''Regarding Lew Basnight's malady...''' 
Again, there seems to be a character with a neurological illness; in this case it is presented as amnesia, but seizures also result in "lost time". (See comments on Miles' "electricity coming on" on page 24.) Such maladies are more common than one supposes, and can offer a glimpse of other-worldliness akin to that of hallucinogenics, and epileptics have, at times, been considered to have access to past or future lives.
:OR it could be the case that Lew has fallen through a crack in time-space and entered a parallel universe; in the previous universe (which he simply remembers as the past), he had not done anything wrong, which explains his perplexity. The same might be the case with Miles, which would be why he did not expect baskets of crockery near his feet. Such moving among worlds is a thread in this work.

'''making a point of pronouncing his name disrespectfully''' 
The only way it could be done is, apparently, by saying Lube Ass Night. Well, that or tone of voice.

'''the Upstate-Downstate Beast''' 
Illinois is one of three states with an Upstate, though one of them doesn't use the term Downstate (South Carolina divides itself into Upstate and Lowcountry). The nickname points to a traveling man, perhaps. "Moral horror," "denounced," "revulsion" probably fit with many crimes, though most of those would have led to a prison sentence and we don't have any information of Lew's serving time.

'''"Although the longer a fellow's name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from non-fiction."''' 
May express Pynchon's reaction to the press' treatment of him over the years. In 1964, when Pynchon heard that the ''New York Herald Tribune'' was writing an article about him, Pynchon wrote to his agent that he assumed the piece "will be riddled with the same lies, calumnies and all-around knavish disregard for my privacy" as previous articles. ("Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask," ''New York Times,'' 4 Mar 1998).

'''Wensleydale''' 
A type of cheese made in Yorkshire, England.

==Page 38==

'''"You have destroyed your name."''' 
Wensleydale using very strong language. He doesn't say "destroyed your reputation" or "discredited your name" but "''destroyed'' your name." Does anyone else see this as suggesting Lew's name was not Lew Basnight before his sin?

'''to plead with him to come back''' 
A strange response, that Troth should ask the Upstate-Downstate Beast to return to her. You would think she'd prefer him as far away as he could get.

'''one of your other wives''' 
A direct reference to Lew's sin, or is Troth just pelting Lew with anything that's in reach?

==Page 39==

'''kazoos''' 
This silly instrument appears in several Pynchon novels.

'''slow ritual movement''' 
Maybe tai chi, or anachronistic Gurdjieffian dance?

'''Drave''' 
A noun meaning "a haul or shoal of fish" or, according to the OED defines, a "fishing expedition in which several men take part, each supplying a net and receiving a share of the profits made. Later, A haul (of fish); also, a shoal." There is also a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drave Drave river] in south central Europe, though there seems to be no textual evidence to support this association.

'''Saratoga chips''' 
Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs, NY, and were often called Saratoga chips in the 19th century.

'''Esthonia Hotel''' 
How the country Estonia was spelled in English during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Atonia is a lack of normal muscle tension, but also, "A frightening form of paralysis that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, most often upon falling asleep or waking up. Commonly called sleep paralysis, the condition is due to an ill-timed disconnection between the brain and the body." [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9811 Definition] This could mean that the hotel in question is nothing more than an internal hallucination of Basnight's, further suggesting that his problem is one of neurological rather than simply moral or spiritual cause.

'''''liable for criminal penalties''''' 
Law and the legal profession so far appear in AtD more than any other Pynchon novel (perhaps save ''The Crying of Lot 49''), and so far, like here, in a negative or confusing light. Perhaps Pynchon sees law as part of the general establishment the novel seems to criticize/oppose.

==Page 40==

'''lofty regions no high-iron pioneer had yet dared''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainwright_Building In the early 1890s] anything taller than about 10 stories would have qualified.

'''remembrance stick''' 
Similar to keisaku in Zen Buddhism, an attempt by a sensei to alert students to their mindlessness in zazen (sitting meditation), usually administered by a stick. An English translation is stick of compassion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyosaku [Wikipedia]]

Lew's performance of commonplace and strange chores is also similar to the way Zen training can proceed for novitiates.

==Page 41==

'''you keep bouncing free. Avoiding penance and thereby definition''' 
It is hard to tie Drave down philosophically. No connection between sin and penance, penance as destiny, penance happens or doesn't, and now this idea that penance ''defines'' one's existence.

==Page 42==

'''Spring arrived''' 
We've seen Lew pretty well through a year: summertime (p. 38) when Troth followed him to Chicago, autumn (p. 40) when he checked in at the Esthonia, winter (p. 41) as his bank account starved, now in the spring his moment of grace.

'''scorcher cap''' 
The cap of an early bicycling enthusiast. According to [http://www.velorution.biz/?p=1288 this site]:

:"In […]1892 [… a] bicyclist to be considered genuine had to be dressed in bicycle clothes. A man had to wear bicycle pants which were baggy at the top and tight to the legs below. Then he had to have bicycle socks and shoes. The shoes were made of canvass. Then he had to have a loose fitting grey colored short which we would designate now as a sport shirt. Then on his head he had to wear a tight fitting cap with a long bill in front, the longer the better up to a certain ceiling length. With this outfit and a bicycle with drop handlebars he was ready to appear in public as a real cyclist. If he could make 20 miles an hour on a good track he was called a 'scorcher,' the idea being that he was going so fast that he would scorch at least the end of his nose if nothing else."

'''shirtwaists with huge shoulders''' 
[[image:shirtwaist.jpg|thumb|caption|Shirtwaists|150px|right]]Fashionable the year of the Fair, the shirtwaist is a dress with a bodice (waist) like a tailored shirt and an attached straight or full skirt, the huge shoulders being the sort of "puffy" look of the sleeves. They are now called blouses. Compare Chevrolette McAdoo's outfit, [[ATD_26-56#Page 26|p. 26]].

'''He understood that things were exactly what they were.''' 
This sentence sums up the entire experience at the Esthonia hotel, which seems to be a Zen-like initiation. Here, Lew Basnight seems to have attained some form of enlightenment, and the description ("a condition...which he later came to think of as grace"), along with this sentence, are almost textbook examples of Zen enlightenment. No lights flash, no changes are seen; one merely understands that things are what they are. After this experience, he leaves the hotel, and no longer needs to be there. He then embarks on his new career, in part because of his extreme ability to notice minute details; something that he was not said to have had before.
:The sentence can also serve as a guide to readers of ''AtD.'' Even when it is tempting to speculate that "this paragraph is about Richard Nixon" or protest that "you can't see Sirius on a summer evening," it is worth the effort to let the text mean what it means.

==Page 43==

'''transfigured''' 
In Lew's time of grace, he shows a changed face.

'''leisurely rips through the fabric of the day''' 
See below

==Page 44==

'''He had learned to step to the side of the day.''' 
Through the book there are juxtapositions of things with and against the day (the 'title motif'). Here, we are told that Lew has learned to step "to the side" of the day. Possibly he is able to enter another plane? This is possible considering the dream-like hotel sequence on previous pages.
:I think that the "other plane" interpretation is a bit of a stretch. The passage seems to imply that Lew has learned to will and maintain a degree of detachment from his surroundings, perhaps a relinquishment of his perceived control over events or his attempts to control them.
: -- I don't see it as a stretch if we accept that he now recognizes that there are alternate, parallel, universes.

'''it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts''' 
The quotes here may be to distinguish the fact that while technically living in Chicago, Lew sometimes exists or moves within a place or plane that others also living there don't see, or have access to.
:Yes, or universes rather than planes.

==Page 45==

'''two-headed eagle''' 
As Holy Roman Emperor, the Austro-Hungarian emperor bore a two-headed eagle (each head crowned) as part of his arms. The Tsar of Russia also used a two-headed eagle, but it was triply crowned (one crown between the heads). The Serbian two-headed eagle appeared on a shield with one crown above it, and the Montenegrin one had a single crown between the heads. Other details of the envelope would serve to disambiguate.

'''Trabants''' 
"Trabanten" (German for 'satellites') originally - during the Thirty Years' War - were lightly armed foot soldiers; later this term was used for servants and/or bodyguards of high-ranking persons.

'''"have a lawyer explain civil liability to you"''' 
Again, law.

'''gumshoe''' 
Perhaps a bit too early to use this term; the Dictionary of American Slang dates it as "by 1906".

'''a couple a thousand hunkies''' 
"Hunkies" was a slur against Hungarians and other eastern Europeans. The word may have morphed into "honkies."

'''Francis Ferdinand''' 
This is indeed the same Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in 1914 triggered World War I. At the time of his appearance in ''AtD'', he would have been 30, and his two passions throughout young adulthood and his 20s were travel and hunting (it is estimated that he shot more than 5,000 deer in his lifetime). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Wikipedia entry]. He did indeed attend the Chicago Exposition. [http://columbus.iit.edu/bookfair/ch27.html]

Click for [[The Habsburgs in Against the Day]]...

See the annotation about Austria-Hungary on the next page.

'''shive artist''' 
Someone proficient with a knife (shive=knife or razor).

'''to rewrite history''' 
Hold on, '''re'''write? As Vibe did on [[#rewrite|page 33,]] Privett seems to reason that history has already been decided and some action would change it rather than generate a valid new history.

==Page 46==

'''"staff," a mixture of plaster and hemp fibers''' 
[http://ftp.apci.net/~truax/1904wf/WF_Mem-Staff.htm Pix and info... ]

[http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html One source] says it was jute, not hemp.

According to [http://www.buildingstonemagazine.com/summer-06/historic.html ''Building Stone'' magazine,] the buildings were meant to be painted in bright colors, but the Chicago climate put the kibosh on that. Even keeping them white called for continuous repainting.

The Museum of Science and Industry is the only structure surviving from the exposition. Built as the Palace of Fine Arts, it started out faced in staff but was later [http://www.aviewoncities.com/chicago/museumofscienceandindustry.htm rebuilt] to the original exterior design in limestone and marble.

'''to counterfeit some deathless white stone''' 

Given the many references throughout ''AtD'' to "white" and "stones" to ''counterfeit'' a ''deathless'' white stone seems portentous.

'''"In Austria," the Archduke was explaining, ". . . the Chicago Stockyards might possibly be rented out . . . for a weekend's amusement"''' 

Pynchon continues his linking of the Stockyard killing-floor with the genocidal horrors of the 20th Century, it seems. See above. Heidegger (sic) made this connection somewhere and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maxwell_Coetzee J.M Coetze's] novel ''Elizabeth Costello'' uses it in a key chapter that was published separately.

'''beaters who drive the animals toward the hunters . . . waiting to shoot them''' 
Skillful use of ambiguity: waiting to shoot the animals or the beaters?

'''"Hungarians occupy the lowest level of brute existence"''' 
Even if the quote might be fictive, the Archduke's characterization is close to the point. Franz Ferdinand, a dour reactionary with aggressive ideas in foreign policy, had the reputation of an avowed Hungarophobe. The Compromise of 1867 created a dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which the Archduke sought to transform in a "trialistic" way, giving an enivsioned southern Slav union of Croatia (which was united in a sub-confederation with Hungary), Bosnia and Dalmatia a status similar to that of the Kingdom of Hungary. Note how the Czechs, a population about twice as large as southwestern Slavs, were omitted from this scheme. The idea was evidently to weaken the Hungarian establishment, and recentralize power in Vienna.

'''Mannlicher''' 
A double-barreled rifle designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher. It is reported that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had several of these made special for him.

Interestingly enough, the rifle is also mentioned in ''Green Hills of Africa'' and ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'' by Ernest Hemingway, who used it extensively on hunting.

Franz was eventually assassinated in Sarajevo. Coincidentally (?), fellow assassinee JFK was initially claimed to have been a victim of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher rifle.

==Page 47==

'''K&K Special Security''' 
"K&K" stands for "Kaiserlich und Königlich," German for "imperial and royal (kingly)," to indicate the Austrian two titles of the ruler of the Dual Monarchy: King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserlich_und_königlich Wikipedia entry].

'''Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit''' 
This is not a German word as far as I know and most likely not even a degenerate Habsburg or one of his officers would have used it (but then I haven't read Franz Ferdinand's account of his travels...). Sounds more like some Babelfish machine translation of "pastry-depravity" to me. I wonder what the German translator will make of this. My guess is, s/he will not make a "typical German" combined noun out of it, but turn the phrase to be able to use an adverb like "mehlspeisennarrisch" instead (what with in Austria and Bavaria there is a word for (mostly sweet) pastry: "Mehlspeise" (literally "flour-meal), and "narrisch" is Austrian/Viennese for being (slightly) mad). But then, of course, there might be a pun intended I as a bad english-speaker just dont get. Maybe via the pronounciation? Check out this [http://www.dict.cc/?s=Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit dictionary], head for "continue searching" and press "voice output" - voila, thats what "Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit" sounds like.

The term probably is made up, but the meaning is more like "shameful addiction to cookie dough." In the context of detectives, what may be happening here is this: The Austrians have heard the canard that American policemen are addicted to doughnuts, but they misunderstand both ''doughnut'' and ''addicted.''

Another possibility: Austrians have read that American detectives will do anything for dough.

'''Boll Weevil Lounge''' 
The boll weevil, a destructive cotton pest, first arrived in America (via Mexico) in 1892, only one year before the opening section of ATD. It is a fitting name for a "Negro Bar" as the boll weevil is the subject of dozens of blues songs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil [Wikipedia]]

1893 is too soon for the songs and probably for the lounge too. Cotton was still king in the South; the big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_States_and_International_Exposition_%281895%29 Atlanta exposition] was two years in the future, and the economic dislocation had not properly begun. The boll weevil songs date from the teens-20s and later.

'''...the only place in Chicago a man could find a decent orange phosphate...''' 
A reference to the modern stereotype that black people like orange soda, here called a phosphate.

==Page 48==

'''Wassermelone''' 
Watermelon; another black stereotype...

'''grip cars''' 
The lead cars in cable-car systems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_City_Railway [Wikipedia]]

'''''deine Mutti'', as you would say''' 
Franz Ferdinand is attempting to engage the patrons of the Boll Weevil Lounge in a game of "the dozens", an insult contest in which opponents make fun of each other's mothers. "The dozens" has its origins in the New Orleans slave trade. As with the boll weevil, "the dozens" is closely associated with blues music. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dozens [Wikipedia]]

'''the World's Fair, not the World's Ugly''' 
A fairly sophisticated pun, if F.F.'s English is so rudimentary.

'''''...'st los, Hund?''''' 
German for "'s up, dog?"

'''All Pimps Look Alike to Me''' 
An early rag by Ernest Hogan was entitled All Coons Look Alike to Me; "Hogan was evidently not the originator of the song's lyrics, having appropriated them after hearing a pianist in a Chicago salon playing a song titled "All Pimps Look Alike to Me"". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hogan See this article.] 
For more "coon" references see text and annotations: [[#Page_33|page 33]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and especially [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424]].

''Who's usin' who? What should we do? Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too'' 
(Icky Thump - White Stripes) / not relevant to this entry but worth listening to.

'''scapegrace''' 
Scoundrel.

'''And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!''' 
WWI?

Was Franz Ferdinand some sort of ruthless cosmopolitan at the time being? You can really see it from his ATD passages.

'''keester''' 
Buttocks.

==Page 49==

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

'''At first Lew took it for a church''' 
This could be an allusion to the film, ''On The Waterfront'', and a similar scene when Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is sent by Johnny Friendly and Co. to eavesdrop on a meeting being held in a church by local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) along with workers from the docks who are fed up with Friendly and the Mob, especially in light of a recent death. Social themes of film seem apt as well. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_waterfront].

Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich)incidentally was a product of this milieu, born in Chicago in 1912 to a Serb steelworker father and Czech seamstress mother. The Sekulovich family hails from Herzegovina.

'''Welsbach mantles''' 
One of the most important advances in the history of lighting, the Welsbach mantle (for a period so ubiquitous it became more commonly known simply as 'gas mantle') was first sold commercially in 1892 and quickly spread throughout Europe. It remained an important part of street lighting until the widespread introduction of electric lighting in the early 1900s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle Wikipedia entry].

'''Reverend Moss Gatlin''' 
A fictional character. Is he connected to Rev. Cherrycoke? They are both Reverends with strong political opinions and you can hear Pynchon's voice here very strong.

Possible allusion to Reverend Fr. John M. Corridan, the real-life counterpart of Father Barry in ''On The Waterfront''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Corridan Wikipedia]

Some real, or anyway nonfictional, anarchist preachers:
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard107.html Thomas Olney,] 17th-century Baptist anarchist who was influential in Rhode Island
*[http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol055/96047023.html Rudolf Rocker] (1873-1958), nicknamed the "anarchist rabbi"
*[http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis,] Dutch minister who came to anarchism in 1897
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/critics/mckinley/chap4.html Albert Dahlquist and Joseph A. Wildman,] caught up in persecutions after the McKinley assassination (Dahlquist was nearly lynched; Wildman was tarred and feathered)
*[http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301208.shtml Father Frank Morales,] participant in Portland anti-globalization demonstrations
*[http://www.deadanarchists.org/anton.html Hugh O. Pentecost,] who in 1889 was slated to address a meeting in commemoration of the Haymarket; Philadelphia authorities suppressed the gathering

'''fascinators''' 
Hair adornments. [http://www.ribbonsandpearls.co.uk/catalogue/fascinators/fascinator_hair_accessories_intro.htm [pix]]

'''bearing the insults of the day''' 
See notes on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''Blake's Jerusalem''' 
The original lines From William Blake's poem are:

I will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England's green and pleasant land.

'''Fierce as the winter's tempest . . . Death's for the bought and sold!''' 
This lyric does not come up in a Google search. It doesn't flow like any other lyric in Pynchon but reads like a rather good hymn text. No variations in the meter, no words broken for the sake of rhyme, no punctuation to show lengthened or chopped syllables. And yet thematically it is a seamless fit with the text around it. Are the lines original in ''AtD,'' or can their source be identified?

==Page 50==

'''Picardy third''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy_third Wikipedia entry]

==Page 51==

'''deadfalls''' 
Low points where refuse collects? Cf. Pynchon's story, Low-Lands?[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deadfalls [def]]

'''prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate''' 
Coupled with the cover blurb Pynchon wrote: "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction." Could ''Against the Day'' be Pynchon's prophecy of a future America?

[[image:we_never_sleep.jpg|thumb|175px|right]]'''The Unsleeping Eye''' 
Reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency. Pinkerton's National Detective Agency had a logo with an eye in the center, and below it read, "We Never Sleep." See also [[ATD_1-25#Page_13|page 13]].

'''bay rum''' 
A type of cologne or after-shave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_rum Wikipedia article]

==Page 52==

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Lew Basnight's temporary presence on the airship may be the first clue as to why it's called ''Inconvenience''. Perhaps his growing sympathy for the anarchists will lead to greater involvement by him, the Chums, or at least the book in portraying the anarchist movement, which is viewed as an inconvenience to the ruling classes. Pynchon may consider his novel's message, similarly, as an inconvenient truth about America's past, present or both.

:I thought it was just a polysyllable that sounds stately but means the opposite.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:18, 5 December 2006 (PST)

In ''Mason & Dixon'', the willful reality of other people are referred to as inconveniences more than once.

'''the whiteness of the place nearly unbearable''' 
Causing an effect something like snow blindness.

'''some weeks till the fair closes''' 
30 October 1893.

'''our future's all a blank''' 
Whoever the Chums get their orders from, they have not received any new ones yet. They look ahead and see a blank page.

'''Freddie Turner''' 
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 - 1932) was, with Charles A. Beard, the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He is best known for ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', an essay which describes his views on how the idea of the frontier shaped the American character, and how the frontier drove American history and America's westward expansion. Excerpt: "In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization."
[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html eText here...]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Wikipedia]

==Page 53==

'''Here's where the Trail comes to an end at last''' 
With the advent of the railroad, the West changed dramatically. Chicago became the stockyards and slaughterhouse of America, and cowboys only funneled their cattle in that direction, no longer simply following them on the range or leading them to more local places of slaughter. The cowboy had become a cog in the wheel of a mechanism of death.

'''Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches''' 
Mentioned in 1911 Britannica article 'Slaughter-house' [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Slaughter-house [etext]]

'''charabanc''' 
An open-topped bus for tourists.

'''"The frontier ends and disconnection begins"''' 
Here, the free cowboy myth of Buffalo Bill's show is replaced by the grim reality of the stockyard worker.

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

'''How the dickens do I know?''' 
A possible reference to the novels of Charles Dickens, who critiques in such works as ''Hard Times'' (1854) the onset of urban decay, and the choked living and working conditions of the proletariat as the Industrial Revolution steams onward. 
Or it may just be a standard euphemism; polite speakers were enjoined not to name the Devil.

'''hob-raising years''' 
Hell-raising years; his early years. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hob Definition of "hob".]

==Page 54==

'''where you knew you could stand and piss would flow two ways at once.''' 
The Professor is talking about growing up in Colorado, where the Continental Divide passes. It would be logical to suggest that, at the precise location of this divide, piss would indeed flow both east and west.
:For Easterners at least, it's a well-known tourist ritual to pee right on the line.

The best place to do this, for tourists, is at Cache La Poudre Lake, headwaters of the Colorado River on Trail Ridge Road (US 34) in Rocky Mountain National Park—it is exactly on the Divide, and water exits to East and West, Atlantic and Pacific.

'''into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well''' 
Describing Lew's movement now, but a few pages previously that of the stock at the slaughterhouse.

'''Cheerfulness . . . a precarious commodity''' 
The original narrator of the Chums passages has definitely been pushed aside now. They seem to be in a totally different book.

==Page 55==

'''. . . they continued in a fragmented reverie which, . . . often announced some change in the works''' 
Good to notice when the Chums get like this again: i.e. unfocused, depressed, without direction, it may lead to patterns in the plot.
:No Fair, no orders, no adventures: The Chums are between books!

'''Speculation began to fill the day.''' 
See note on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''the ill-famed Hawk''' 
In deepening autumn it is ''rehearsing'' "swift descent, merciless assault, rapture of souls"; at the end of the passage "the temperature head[s] down." The Hawk appears to be a metaphor for winter or its storms. ([http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_hawk/ possible definition?]) 
:That is pretty conclusive. ''Hawk'' an established and documented metaphor for the winter wind.
The Hawk is also one of the ubiquitous birds of prey in ATD. The words showing its lethal effect and the drop in temperature are Pynchon themes
for evil. Evil comes from the lands of low temperatures. See GR.

In addition to these meanings, TRP also demonstrates local knowledge here, as the Hawk is the name of a specific wind in Chicago. The Hawk is the name of a northeast wind, one that comes off Lake Michigan usually in the spring. A meteorologist will tell you that a northeast wind is somewhat unusual, contrary to (or against) the prevailing winds that generally come from the west. The effects of the Hawk can be seen at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where centerfield is on the northeast corner of Sheffield and Waveland. When the Hawk is blowing hits that, given a usual southwest wind, have a chance at being home runs will die in the outfield and are easily caught. The Hawk is a reminder that, though winter has left town, it will be back. The wind has a very particular resonance for a Chicagoan, and it's very impressive that Pynchon, not a native, should make use of it, especially in such an offhand manner.

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

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T22:15:12Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 6 */ cleanup

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

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

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

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

Read their response below:

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

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

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

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

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

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

==Page 1==

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

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

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

:In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

:I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

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

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

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

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

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

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

Read more about the historical St. Cosmo[[St. Cosmo|here]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia.

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] 'Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties.

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

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold, Impulsive, and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc.

In other Pynchon novels: 1) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the H.M.S. Inconvenience is the ship of Fender-Belly Bodine. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience More]. 2) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. 2) In ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting." (435)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 

AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

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

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly.

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, adventurous, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident.

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

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

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']]

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3. See also the 2004 bestseller, ''The Devil in the White City'', a non-fiction work that details the building of the Fair, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

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

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

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

==Page 4==

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

'''"Turn to"''' 
a shipboard expression, "put your back into it". Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter 11.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters... TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Rich with meaning or just another goofy Pynchon name? Some possibilities include: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft? (4) He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding on a different "earth" happens.

==Page 5==
'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''The Princess Casamassima'' is an 1886 novel by Henry James. 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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

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

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
It is unclear so far why Pugnax would detect no scent from Lindsay.

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

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" is a Dutch-sounding name suggesting "fond o' juice," "wonder juice", and "wander juice". "Heino" is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Dutch, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 7==

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

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

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 8==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 9==

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

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

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

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

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

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

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

==Page 12==

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

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

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

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

==Page 13==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 14==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 15==

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

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

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

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

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

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

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

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

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

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

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 18==

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

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

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

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

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

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

==Page 19==

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 20==

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

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

==Page 21==

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

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

==Page 22==

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

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

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

==Page 23==

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

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

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

==Page 24==

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

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

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

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

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

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

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

==Page 25==

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

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

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

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

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

==References==
<references />

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

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T22:08:21Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 5 */

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

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

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

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

Read their response below:

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

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

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

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

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

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

==Page 1==

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

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

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

:In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

:I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

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

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

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

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

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

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

Read more about the historical St. Cosmo[[St. Cosmo|here]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia.

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] 'Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties.

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

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold, Impulsive, and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc.

In other Pynchon novels: 1) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the H.M.S. Inconvenience is the ship of Fender-Belly Bodine. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience More]. 2) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. 2) In ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting." (435)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 

AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

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

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly.

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, adventurous, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident.

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

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

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']]

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3. See also the 2004 bestseller, ''The Devil in the White City'', a non-fiction work that details the building of the Fair, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

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

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

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

==Page 4==

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

'''"Turn to"''' 
a shipboard expression, "put your back into it". Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter 11.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters... TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Rich with meaning or just another goofy Pynchon name? Some possibilities include: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft? (4) He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding on a different "earth" happens.

==Page 5==
'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 7==

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

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

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 8==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 9==

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

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

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

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

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

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

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

==Page 12==

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

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

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

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

==Page 13==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 14==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 15==

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

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

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

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

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

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

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

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

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

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

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 18==

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

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

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

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

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

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

==Page 19==

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 20==

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

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

==Page 21==

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

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

==Page 22==

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

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

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

==Page 23==

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

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

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

==Page 24==

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

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

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

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

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

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

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

==Page 25==

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

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

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

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

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

==References==
<references />

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

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T22:07:54Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 5 */ major cleanup

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

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

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

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

Read their response below:

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

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

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

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

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

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

==Page 1==

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

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

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

:In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

:I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

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

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

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

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

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

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

Read more about the historical St. Cosmo[[St. Cosmo|here]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia.

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] 'Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties.

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

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold, Impulsive, and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc.

In other Pynchon novels: 1) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the H.M.S. Inconvenience is the ship of Fender-Belly Bodine. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience More]. 2) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. 2) In ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting." (435)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 

AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

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

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly.

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, adventurous, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident.

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

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

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']]

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3. See also the 2004 bestseller, ''The Devil in the White City'', a non-fiction work that details the building of the Fair, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

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

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

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

==Page 4==

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

'''"Turn to"''' 
a shipboard expression, "put your back into it". Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter 11.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters... TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Rich with meaning or just another goofy Pynchon name? Some possibilities include: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft? (4) He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding on a different "earth" happens.

==Page 5==
'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

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

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

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

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

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

This also

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 7==

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

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

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 8==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 9==

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

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

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

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

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

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

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

==Page 12==

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

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

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

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

==Page 13==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 14==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 15==

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

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

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

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

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

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

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

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

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

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

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 18==

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

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

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

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

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

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

==Page 19==

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 20==

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

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

==Page 21==

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

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

==Page 22==

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

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

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

==Page 23==

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

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

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

==Page 24==

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

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

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

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

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

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

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

==Page 25==

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

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

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

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

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

==References==
<references />

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

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T22:00:24Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 4 */ cleanup

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

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

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

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

Read their response below:

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

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

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

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

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

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

==Page 1==

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

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

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

:In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

:I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

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

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

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

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

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

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

Read more about the historical St. Cosmo[[St. Cosmo|here]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia.

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] 'Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties.

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

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold, Impulsive, and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc.

In other Pynchon novels: 1) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the H.M.S. Inconvenience is the ship of Fender-Belly Bodine. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience More]. 2) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. 2) In ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting." (435)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 

AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

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

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly.

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, adventurous, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident.

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

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

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']]

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3. See also the 2004 bestseller, ''The Devil in the White City'', a non-fiction work that details the building of the Fair, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

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

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

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

==Page 4==

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

'''"Turn to"''' 
a shipboard expression, "put your back into it". Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter 11.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters... TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Rich with meaning or just another goofy Pynchon name? Some possibilities include: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft? (4) He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding on a different "earth" happens.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question remains nameless, we shall see, but is very relevant to the text. We learn a bit more in the next few pages, when St. Cosmos goes into Chicago.

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

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 7==

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

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

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 8==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 9==

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

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

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

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

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

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

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

==Page 12==

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

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

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

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

==Page 13==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 14==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 15==

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

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

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

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

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

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

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

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

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

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

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 18==

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

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

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

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

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

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

==Page 19==

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 20==

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

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

==Page 21==

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

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

==Page 22==

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

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

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

==Page 23==

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

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

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

==Page 24==

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

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

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

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

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

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

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

==Page 25==

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

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

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

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

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

==References==
<references />

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

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T21:55:53Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 3 */ more cleanup

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

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

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

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

Read their response below:

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

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

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

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

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

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

==Page 1==

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

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

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

:In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

:I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

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

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

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

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

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

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

Read more about the historical St. Cosmo[[St. Cosmo|here]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia.

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] 'Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties.

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

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold, Impulsive, and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc.

In other Pynchon novels: 1) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the H.M.S. Inconvenience is the ship of Fender-Belly Bodine. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience More]. 2) In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. 2) In ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting." (435)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 

AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

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

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly.

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, adventurous, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident.

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

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

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']]

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3. See also the 2004 bestseller, ''The Devil in the White City'', a non-fiction work that details the building of the Fair, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

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

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

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

==Page 4==

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

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

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question remains nameless, we shall see, but is very relevant to the text. We learn a bit more in the next few pages, when St. Cosmos goes into Chicago.

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

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 7==

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

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

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 8==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 9==

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

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

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

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

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

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

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

==Page 12==

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

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

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

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

==Page 13==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 14==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 15==

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

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

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

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

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

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

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

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

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

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

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 18==

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

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

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

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

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

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

==Page 19==

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 20==

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

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

==Page 21==

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

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

==Page 22==

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

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

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

==Page 23==

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

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

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

==Page 24==

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

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

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

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

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

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

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

==Page 25==

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

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

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

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

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

==References==
<references />

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

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T21:47:16Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 3 */ major cleanup -- these first 40 pages are the most bloated of the whole wiki-- we don't wanna scare people away early on!

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

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

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

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

Read their response below:

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

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

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

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

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

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

==Page 1==

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

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

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

:In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

:I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

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

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

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

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

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

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

Read more about the historical St. Cosmo[[St. Cosmo|here]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia.

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] 'Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties.

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

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

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

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

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 

AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

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

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly.

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, adventurous, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident.

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

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

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']]

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3 See also the 2004 bestseller, ''The Devil in the White City'', a non-fiction work that details the building of the Centennial, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

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

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

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

==Page 4==

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

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

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question remains nameless, we shall see, but is very relevant to the text. We learn a bit more in the next few pages, when St. Cosmos goes into Chicago.

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

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 7==

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

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

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 8==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 9==

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

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

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

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

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

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

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

==Page 12==

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

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

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

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

==Page 13==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 14==

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

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

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry] 

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? 
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) Wikipedia entry]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) Wikipedia entry]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On [[#Page 4|page 4]], Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T21:30:46Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 1 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

"I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:"''It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.''" (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk''' 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
"Range" is defined in the ''Oxford American Dictionary'' as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. Some other connotations may include:

:'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range".

:"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's] ''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

:In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

:I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

Compare with the nautical lauguage of the opening scene from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest':

:ACT I.
:SCENE I. — On a Ship at sea. A Storm, with Thunder and
:Lightning.
:Enter Master and Boatswain severally.
:Mast. Boatswain !
:Boats. Here, master: what cheer?
:Mast. Good, speak to the mariners : fall to't yarely, or
:we run ourselves a-ground : bestir, bestir. [Exit].
:Enter Mariners.
:Boats. Heigh, my hearts ! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts
:yare, yare ! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle.
:[Exeunt Mariners.] — Blow till thou burst thy wind, if
:room enough!

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." ([http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_29:_289-295#Page_290 p. 290]) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics] 
It's also interesting to think of other modern literary aeronautic ships of the line: that of the lightening gatherer "fellowship" in Neil Gaiman's '''''STARDUST''''' of 1998 and the fleets of them found Philip Pullman's ''''''HIS DARK MATERIALS'''''' both of these works now realized as interesting films. There are also such machines on the drawing boards today, giant ships, two football fields long!

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3 There is no reason that Pynchon would not be aware of Erik Larson's brilliant: '''''THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY''''' a non-fiction work that details the building of the Centennial, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro and Miles post-quintet years, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945 and in the arts of Japan’s exploding subculture.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question remains nameless, we shall see, but is very relevant to the text. We learn a bit more in the next few pages, when St. Cosmos goes into Chicago.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no. German would also be HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful. Miles and Chick's telepathic intercourse during Bitches Brew era.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums' series.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Vineland''].

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry] 

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? 
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) Wikipedia entry]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) Wikipedia entry]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On [[#Page 4|page 4]], Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T21:28:34Z

Bleakhaus: /* Epigraph */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

"I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:"''It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.''" (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk''' 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
"Range" is defined in the ''Oxford American Dictionary'' as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range".

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

Compare with the nautical lauguage of the opening scene from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest':

:ACT I.
:SCENE I. — On a Ship at sea. A Storm, with Thunder and
:Lightning.
:Enter Master and Boatswain severally.
:Mast. Boatswain !
:Boats. Here, master: what cheer?
:Mast. Good, speak to the mariners : fall to't yarely, or
:we run ourselves a-ground : bestir, bestir. [Exit].
:Enter Mariners.
:Boats. Heigh, my hearts ! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts
:yare, yare ! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle.
:[Exeunt Mariners.] — Blow till thou burst thy wind, if
:room enough!

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." ([http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_29:_289-295#Page_290 p. 290]) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics] 
It's also interesting to think of other modern literary aeronautic ships of the line: that of the lightening gatherer "fellowship" in Neil Gaiman's '''''STARDUST''''' of 1998 and the fleets of them found Philip Pullman's ''''''HIS DARK MATERIALS'''''' both of these works now realized as interesting films. There are also such machines on the drawing boards today, giant ships, two football fields long!

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3 There is no reason that Pynchon would not be aware of Erik Larson's brilliant: '''''THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY''''' a non-fiction work that details the building of the Centennial, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro and Miles post-quintet years, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945 and in the arts of Japan’s exploding subculture.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question remains nameless, we shall see, but is very relevant to the text. We learn a bit more in the next few pages, when St. Cosmos goes into Chicago.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no. German would also be HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful. Miles and Chick's telepathic intercourse during Bitches Brew era.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums' series.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Vineland''].

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry] 

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? 
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) Wikipedia entry]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) Wikipedia entry]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On [[#Page 4|page 4]], Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T21:27:16Z

Bleakhaus: /* cover seal */ cleanup, link added

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal is written in Tibetan. Someone going by the name 'Ya Sam' [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112066&keywords=Namgyal posted] on the Pynchon-l message board:

"I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center"

The seal also bears some resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:"''It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.''" (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
"Range" is defined in the ''Oxford American Dictionary'' as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range".

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

Compare with the nautical lauguage of the opening scene from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest':

:ACT I.
:SCENE I. — On a Ship at sea. A Storm, with Thunder and
:Lightning.
:Enter Master and Boatswain severally.
:Mast. Boatswain !
:Boats. Here, master: what cheer?
:Mast. Good, speak to the mariners : fall to't yarely, or
:we run ourselves a-ground : bestir, bestir. [Exit].
:Enter Mariners.
:Boats. Heigh, my hearts ! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts
:yare, yare ! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle.
:[Exeunt Mariners.] — Blow till thou burst thy wind, if
:room enough!

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." ([http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_29:_289-295#Page_290 p. 290]) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics] 
It's also interesting to think of other modern literary aeronautic ships of the line: that of the lightening gatherer "fellowship" in Neil Gaiman's '''''STARDUST''''' of 1998 and the fleets of them found Philip Pullman's ''''''HIS DARK MATERIALS'''''' both of these works now realized as interesting films. There are also such machines on the drawing boards today, giant ships, two football fields long!

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3 There is no reason that Pynchon would not be aware of Erik Larson's brilliant: '''''THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY''''' a non-fiction work that details the building of the Centennial, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro and Miles post-quintet years, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945 and in the arts of Japan’s exploding subculture.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question remains nameless, we shall see, but is very relevant to the text. We learn a bit more in the next few pages, when St. Cosmos goes into Chicago.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no. German would also be HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful. Miles and Chick's telepathic intercourse during Bitches Brew era.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums' series.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Vineland''].

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry] 

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? 
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) Wikipedia entry]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) Wikipedia entry]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On [[#Page 4|page 4]], Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 1-25

2008-09-22T21:22:25Z

Bleakhaus: /* cover text */ cleanup

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
[[image:Ispar.jpg|right|thumb|125px|An alphabet viewed through Iceland spar ('birefringence')]]
Words viewed through the translucent crystal known as 'Iceland spar,' look like this-- with multiple 'ghost' images. Note that here, the ghost images appear in multiple typefaces. The combination of traditional serif fonts with modern sans-serif fonts suggests the themes of time, past/present, etc.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
"Range" is defined in the ''Oxford American Dictionary'' as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range".

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

In addition, light over ranges is an issue throughout the novel: exploitation and development of electrical and electronics was a concern of the Raymond, Pynchon & Company and Pynchon and company, an investment firm run by yacht enthusiast George M. Pynchon. Pynchon & Company invested in Edison's work.

I wonder whether "light over the ranges" could refer to space-time along the line of the theories of general relativity, particularly since the voyage of ''inconvenience'' appears at times to take place under that conceptual framework. In addition, keeping in mind Pynchon's educational background, I would add to the above definitions and considerations that "range" is also a mathematical concept.

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#single_up_all_lines ''V.'', p.11]; [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#single_up_all_lines ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.31]; [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_488-491#single_up_all_lines ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.489]; and [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_26:_257-265#Page_258 ''Mason & Dixon'', pp.258 and 260]. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki ''Vineland'']?) in preparation for a voyage to...?

Also, in the very first sentence, Pynchon introduces the concept of doubling (with the word "Single"!) "single up all lines" as a call to journey, to movement and expansion, a beginning. Then, on [[#Page_10|page 10]]: "only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor." Thus, a progressive singling or reduction of all lines/paths, a rationalization/routinization unto death. Both represent "a progressive reduction of choices" a collapsing of many possibilities into one "reality." ''See also'' [[ATD_557-587#Page_585|annotation, page 585]] and more on [[Routinization of Charisma]].

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

Compare with the nautical lauguage of the opening scene from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest':

:ACT I.
:SCENE I. — On a Ship at sea. A Storm, with Thunder and
:Lightning.
:Enter Master and Boatswain severally.
:Mast. Boatswain !
:Boats. Here, master: what cheer?
:Mast. Good, speak to the mariners : fall to't yarely, or
:we run ourselves a-ground : bestir, bestir. [Exit].
:Enter Mariners.
:Boats. Heigh, my hearts ! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts
:yare, yare ! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle.
:[Exeunt Mariners.] — Blow till thou burst thy wind, if
:room enough!

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." ([http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_29:_289-295#Page_290 p. 290]) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics] 
It's also interesting to think of other modern literary aeronautic ships of the line: that of the lightening gatherer "fellowship" in Neil Gaiman's '''''STARDUST''''' of 1998 and the fleets of them found Philip Pullman's ''''''HIS DARK MATERIALS'''''' both of these works now realized as interesting films. There are also such machines on the drawing boards today, giant ships, two football fields long!

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3 There is no reason that Pynchon would not be aware of Erik Larson's brilliant: '''''THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY''''' a non-fiction work that details the building of the Centennial, the growth of Chicago, and the first serial murderer in America.

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.
:There's more to this, as becomes apparent shortly. Here are more opposites; things seen vs unseen, visible vs. invisible.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro and Miles post-quintet years, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945 and in the arts of Japan’s exploding subculture.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question remains nameless, we shall see, but is very relevant to the text. We learn a bit more in the next few pages, when St. Cosmos goes into Chicago.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
''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. The novel certainly does have notable relevance in today's climate of terrorism and political violence. While the book's details are not directly applicable to current issues, the central theme admiration for the beautiful if imperfect world vs. a desire to change it through terrorism will seem all too familiar to contemporary readers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia] [[Princess Casamassima|Discussion of ''The Princess Casamassima'']]

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no. German would also be HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful. Miles and Chick's telepathic intercourse during Bitches Brew era.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter. 
Given that it was founded in 1997, and is military-related and in the South, see ''Blackwater USA'', a private military company founded by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA]
Thousands of news stories in September/October 2007.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.
:It's not a cop-out, it sets the question of what is going on in the mysterious organization to which the Chums belong.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The South called the Civil War "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion" and thus the soldiers were "rebels" or "rebs." The official papers of the war have the title of "Official Records of the War of Rebellion," emphasizing that the South had no right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums' series.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Vineland''].

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subject to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein. [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=W]

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life coldness as here compared to the South.

==Page 10==

'''rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.''' 

See [[#Page 3| p.3 entry, above]] for a comparison of this passage with "single up all lines." The Rationalization/Routinization of Charisma is a common trope in Pynchon, particularly in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Routinization_of_Charisma ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]
 This is why the ornamental doily-like linen cloths on the upper backs and arms of upholstered furniture were called '''''antimacassars'''''.

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry] 

This also sets up oppositions between dark vs light (of the White City), order vs disorder; good vs evil.

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? 
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]; See also [[ATD_219-242#Page 231|p.231]].

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) Wikipedia entry]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) Wikipedia entry]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On [[#Page 4|page 4]], Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

Although seizures are electrical discharges from the brain, epileptics rarely describe sensing electricity. They see altered light, hear altered sounds, or feel auras, though usually described as inside of themselves, not around them. They also feel confusion, not clarity. The full description seems to better represent that of a "peak experience", or a transcendental state. I also wonder whether, "Pretty soon, I'm just back to tripping over my feet again", refers to more earth-bound means of attaining mind-altered states.

This is one of several early suggestions that Miles and Lew Basnight experience similar states.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 26-56

2008-09-22T21:15:11Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 31 */ I for one favor editing this colossal heap of bullshit out completely

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 26==

'''egret plumes''' 
Some species of egrets were threatened with extinction in the 19th century because their plumes (also called ''aigrettes'') were much used in millinery. Problem is, the egrets grew the showy feathers only in breeding season, so that's when they were killed, hence no little egrets (egretlets?).

'''Little Egypt''' 
was the stage name for two popular exotic dancers, Ashea Wabe who danced at the Seeley banquet at the 1893 World's Fair and Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, also performing under the stage name Fatima, appeared at the "Street in Cairo" exhibition on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(dancer) Wikipedia entry] Also a 1961 [[Little_Egypt|song]] by the Coasters.

==Page 27==

'''Bacchanale''' 
From ''Samson et Dalila'', op. 47 (1877) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_and_Delilah_%28opera%29 Wikipedia entry]. Listen to a [http://themodernword.com/wiki/bacchanale.mp3 30 second MP3 sample]

"Bacchanalia" describes not just the music but the dance too, in this context.

'''from here to Timbuctoo''' 
Now known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu Timbuktu,] a standard figure of speech for the other end of Creation.

'''Maxim whirling machines...''' 
This paragraph describes a number of real flying apparati: [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Aero_Oct1893.html This article] from October 1893 describes the Maxim whirling machine and others.

'''ornithurgy''' 
Invented word?

My guess is that it signifies something like bird-works: 
ornith- variant of ornitho; [New Latin orntho-, from Greek, from orns, ornth-, bird;] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ornitho-] 
-urgy [New Latin -rgia, from Greek -ourgi, from -ourgos, working, from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/-urgy]

'''Dally''' 
Merle's relationship with Dally is reminiscent of Ryan and Tatum O'Neal's characters in the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film, "Paper Moon". Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 28==

'''''Imbottigliata!''''' Italian for "bottled".

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
The Lolita motif is common in Pynchon's works. Other Lolitas include Bianca in [[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow.'']

:Dahlia is four or five years old! She is not a Lolita motif here. Lolita was twelve and Humbert was sick.

::Too early in the novel to jump into such conclusions.

'''in Randolph's face a degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic''' 
Randolph "froze" previously, on page 12; evidently this is a trait already established in the ''Chums'' novels.

'''fulminate me if she ain't''' 
What an odd turn of phrase: set me off explosively.

'''this Trouvé-screw unit over here''' 
Gustave Trouvé built advanced machinery from the 1860s to the 1890s; [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Screws_May1892.html his work on airscrews] was pivotal, and he also invented [http://www.electricrecordteam.com/history.htm the outboard motor.] Before Trouvé's design studies, propulsion in the air used sail-rotors like windmills or depended on slightly modified marine propellers.

==Page 29==

'''Midway Plaisance''' 
The big central concourse of the White City. "Plaisance" is an alternative (or Frenchified) spelling of "pleasance," an esthetically appealing spot. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this very good site] on the Columbian Exposition, the Midway Plaisance lent its name to the midways of circuses ever after.

'''a l'étouffée''' 
French, meaning braised. So, braised alligator meat. Braised food, for instance crawfish, is a culinary specialty of New Orleans.

In the New Orleans context, a recipe is pertinent because "braise" doesn't exactly tell the story of this Cajun preparation. The following is drastically abridged from, of all things, the obituary of Joe Daole ("Joe Dale") in the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' April 21, 2007:
:Saute onion, green pepper, celery, parsley and garlic in a great deal of butter. Add peeled and chopped tomatoes and seasonings. Simmer, covered, 5-10 minutes. Make a dark brown roux with oil and flour; add to vegetables. Add seafood stock and bring to a boil. Add peeled shrimp or crawfish tail meat and cook just 2-3 minutes. Serve over rice.

'''Sloane Laboratory''' 
Yale's physics lab built 1882. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_33|page 33]].

'''Professor Gibbs''' 
Josiah Williard Gibbs (1839-1903), American mathematical physicist. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1854 he went to Yale and won prizes for excellence in Latin and mathematics. He undertook research in engineering and received his Ph.D in 1863, the first doctorate in engineering to be conferred in the US. From 1866 to 1869 Gibbs studies in Europe - first in Paris, then in Berlin and finally in Heidelberg. He was professor at Yale from 1871 to 1903. He contributed substantially to the study of thermodynamics, and his most important work, ''On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances'' (1876 and 1878) and his "phase rule" established him as a founder of physical chemistry. Gibbs' work on vector analysis was also of major importance in pure mathematics. Gibbs was one of the greatest American scientists in the 19th century. ([http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Gibbs.html Gibbs].)

'''De Forest''' 
Lee De Forest (1873-1961), American inventor. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and educated at Yale and Chicago. A pioneer of radio, he introduced the grid into the therm-ionic valve, and invented the audion (1907), feedback circuit (1912) and the four-electrode valve. He involved in first news by radio (1916). He also did much early work on sound reproduction and on television. He patented over 300 inventions in wireless telegraphy, radio, telephony, talking pictures, high-speed facsimile transmission, television, radiotherapy, radar, etc. He was called, sometimes, "the father of radio." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest De Forest].)

'''Kimura''' 
He received his Ph.D degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1896. (Dissertation: ''Studies on General Spherical Functions''.) He published a paper ''On the Nabla of Quaternions'' in ''The Annals of Mathermatics'', Vol 10, No. 1/6 (1895-1896). In 1912, he published a paper called ''One-Waveness in Wireless Telegraphy; Pseudo-Impact Excitation'' in ''Physical Review'' of May 1912. (''Nabla'' is an early name for the "del" operator, symbolized by the inverted Greek letter Δ.)

'''Ray Ipsow''' 
In Latin ''re ipso'' means "the thing itself." "To the thing itself" was the motto and rallying cry of the investigational method known as phenomenology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology Wikipedia entry] developed by Edmund Husserl [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl Wikipedia entry]. As the phrase indicates, it is a plea against abstraction--a theme of GR--- and for reality 'itself'.

'''Outer Indianoplace''' 
Derogatory nickname for Indianapolis.

'''down in New Orleans . . . that Khartoum business''' 
Evidently two Chums of Chance books we didn't know about. Perhaps ''The Chums of Chance and the Voodoo Priest'' and ''The Chums of Chance and the Mussulman Hordes.''

'''Khartoum... Mahdi's army''' 
Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. The Mahdi army refered to here was an Islamic group in the 1880s that advocated a return to strict Islamic values and battled with the government of Khartoum and Egyptian armies.More on these convoluted events at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sudan_(1884-1898) Wikipedia entry].

The concept of the Mahdi is far beyond this one historic event, however.
In point of fact, the U.S. is fighting the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army Mahdi Army] in Iraq right now.

==Page 30==

'''contrary wind . . . Oltre Giubba, instead of down at Alex''' 
From Khartoum you fly north by west to Alexandria. That wind was about as contrary as it could be: from Khartoum to Oltre Giuba is south by east. Now called [http://www.jubaland.org/ Jubaland,] Oltre Giuba (just one B, please, this isn't ''Pagliacci'') is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oltre_Giuba the southwesternmost part of Somalia,] across the Juba River from the rest. Not to be confused with Juba province in southern Sudan.
:Oh, and the Oltre Giuba diversion must have taken place before ''Inconvenience'' was fitted with hydrogen steam power, else she could have flown against the wind.

'''railroad watch''' 
High-quality pocket watch. [http://www.pockethorology.org/Railroad/Railroad.htm [pix and info]]

==Page 31==

'''Scarsdale Vibe''' 
Scarsdale NY boasts that it's Westchester County's wealthiest community, so a 'Scarsdale vibe' implies 'stinking of money'. Vibe is another Pynchon baddie whose last name starts with "V", ''e.g.'', Brock Vond in ''Vineland.''

'''"The Juggernaut"''' 
The name of Vibe's private train derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning "Lord of the Universe" one of the many names of Lord Krishna. "Krishna" itself means "black" or "dark" skinned. British colonial "urban" legend had it that Hindus sought to be crushed under the wheels of giant cars in Krishna's "chariot procession" at Puri as a way of gaining salvation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut see the Wikipedia entry.]

Capitalism has often been described as a juggernaut. One of numerous uses:
"Even as leaders of nation states compete for power and prestige, the juggernaut of capitalism diminishes borders, weakens governments and, eventually," ...
http://www.southpacific.arts.unsw.edu.au/resources/resource_nissology.htm - 
:A leading sociologist, Anthony Giddens, is also responsible for the phrase, "the juggernaut of modernity". See this incredibly relevant definition and analysis of this phrase: "The most defining property of modernity, according to Giddens, is '''that we are disembedded from time and space'''. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved, time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, however, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like, even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge. In pre-modern societies, it were the elders who possessed the knowledge: they were definable in time and space. In modern societies we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong: there's always a risk we have to take. Also the technologies which we use, and which transform constraints into means, hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a 'juggernaut': modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut traveling through space." Wikipedia [[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Giddens]]

'''in disguise . . . bodyguards and secretaries . . . ebony stick''' 
Some great disguise!

'''Foley Walker''' 
"Foley walker" is a term used to indicate a sound-effects expert. Also known as a foley artist [http://www.natf.org/wad/foley.htm [cite]]. One of the foley walker's main jobs is to add the sound of footsteps to movies where required, imitating the way the character would walk. So, a kind of 'stand-in'.

'''Forty-seventh and Ashland''' 
[[image:47th-Ashland.jpg|right|thumb|caption|47th & Ashland Avenue, 1935| 200px]][...] First, the story [...] about Ashland being named for the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire is an urban legend. Ashland Avenue, first known as Reuben Street, was already developed before the fire and was considered the height of suburban living on the West Side in the 1860s.
[http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/ashland_the_great_fire_and_the_ruins_of_chicago/ [cite]] [...] The spread of movie palaces in the automobile age presaged the spread of commercial buildings from the Loop to the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 1930, Marshall Field & Co. had created smaller versions of its downtown store in Evanston and Oak Park, while neighborhood retailers like Goldblatt's and Wieboldt's were moving downtown. Chicago developed regional shopping districts at 47th and Ashland, 63rd and Halsted, Irving Park and Pulaski, and many other locations. Certain areas catered to specialized industries, such as “Automobile Row” on South Michigan Avenue, or the Maxwell Street Market, an open-air European-style market that resisted every effort at modernization until its destruction in the 1990s. [...]
[http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/316.html [cite]]

==Page 32==

'''Second Corinthians''' 
This exchange between Vibe and Ipsow refers specifically to 2 Corinthians 11:19 -- For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
[http://www.kingjamesversionofthebible.com/47-secondcorinthians.html [cite]]

'''Ipsow's response to S. Vibe on lines 21-23( ...in these days need arises directly from criminal acts of the rich)''' can be seen as a direct paraphrase of Ch. 5 of the book of James:
Now listen you rich.. you have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! the wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields cry out against you... you have lived in luxury and fattened yourself in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed innocent men ... James 5

==Page 33==

'''"Old Zip Coon"''' 
"Old Zip Coon" dates from as early as 1834 and is considered the original name for the 19th-century American folk song, 'Turkey in the Straw'. [[Old Zip Coon | lyrics]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw Wikipedia] See also [http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/Amsong59.htm] and [http://www.csufresno.edu:80/folklore/ballads/RJ19258.html]. 
The word "coon" may originate in America as a derogatory name for a Negro, but it was current in England too (therefore not "for an African-American"). For other occurrences of the word, with show business associations in every case, see text and annotations: [[#Page_48|page 48]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424.]]
:In this contributor's boyhood, a brand of chewing tobacco heavily advertised on East Tennessee radio and television used the tune in its jingle, with lyrics close to:
<blockquote>If you like a spicy taste 
Every morning, night and noon, 
Then you're bound to like the taste 
When you chew Red Coon.</blockquote>
:The package at this time portrayed a raccoon, but it's possible a different image had come before.

'''Dr. Tesla''' 
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), American inventor. He was born in Croatia of Serbian parents. He studied at Graz (Austria), Prague and Paris. He discovered (1881) principle of rotating magnetic field, basis of practically all alternating-current (AC) machinery. Between 1882-1884 he was an engineer in Paris (1882-84) and constructed his first induction motor (1883). He emigrated to the United States (1884, naturalized in 1889). Worked for Thmoas Edison (1884-85) but left the Edison Works at Menlo Park (Edison opposed to AC idea) to concentrate on his own inventions, which include improved dynamos, transformers, electric bulbs, wireless communication (1897) and the high-frequency coil which bears his name. (Cf [[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Tesla].)

<div id="rewrite">'''violate . . . the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be''' 
Notice what he ''doesn't'' say: the principles of the free market, the essence of the capitalist economic system. As if modern history has already been written and such research would somehow undermine it.</div>

'''Sloane Lab''' 
Completed in 1912, was the gift of Henry T. Sloane, BA 1866, and William D. Sloane, MA HON. 1889. Of Longmeadow stone, it is Collegiate Gothic in style. Charles C. Haight was the architect. (An underground addition was constructed in 1958 to house a Van de Graaff machine-now removed. The John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc., and the U.S. Public Health Service financed it. Sloane Lab was the first University constructed on the Hillhouse Estate (less the three acres adjoining Sachem’s Wood). The property was a gift in 1910 of Mrs. Russell Sage, and called Pierson Sage Square. The University had wanted to acquire the land to develop into a turn-of-the-century “science park”. The well-known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead advised in the land’s development. [217 Prospect Street]
[http://www.facilities.yale.edu/campus/Building1.asp?lstBldg=1075 [cite]] and [http://www.facilities.yale.edu/images/BFS/1075.jpg [photo]].

Interestingly, Frederick Law Olmstead was also pivital in the development of the grounds for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His famous "Wooded Isle" remains a centerpiece in Chicago's Jackson Park. [http://www.hydepark.org/parks/jpac/jpkhistoryandfair.htm [link]] and
[http://www.hydepark.org/parks/pics/laggen4.JPG [photo]].

For a more detailed account of Olmstead's landscape architecture as it relates to the 1893 World's Fair, see Erik Larson's ''The Devil in the White City''.

:These would be anachronistic, but as the note for p29 above mentions, a lab existed by 1882.

'''World-System''' 
Dr. Tesla's idea of providing electrical power that anyone could tap in for free alludes the birth of wireless internet before being monopolized by b(p)ig companies and corporate greed.

==Page 34==

'''the most terrible weapon the world has seen . . . rational systems of control''' 
This statement defines the threat—as the plutocrats see it—of free power (anarchy) and their justification for bending government and every other compelling force to stamp it out.

'''out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all''' 
Vibe quotes Thomas Hobbes, who in ''Leviathan'' (1651) described the primitive state of the human race as ''bellum omnium contra omnes,'' the war of all against all, which was ended only by the creation of the State. Note the change of "war" to "anarchy."

'''Pierpont''' 
John Pierpont Morgan I (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker, who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation.
[...]
In 1900, Morgan financed inventor Nikola Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower with $150,000 for experiments in radio. Tesla was unsuccessful and, in 1904, Morgan pulled out. Later, Tesla created an AC generator
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan [cite]]

'''non-linear phenomena of scale''' 
Linear scaling means, for example, store twice as much charge, get twice as much voltage. An instance of behavior becoming nonlinear is when air insulation breaks down (arcs, lightning); here adding charge may lead to a ''decrease'' in voltage.

'''Somble, Strool & Fleshway''' 
Law firms in Pynchon have such charming names; compare Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus, and Short in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] or Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49'']. This one has more of a Dickensian sound. Somble could be a portmanteau of ''somber'' and ''tremble'' or ''some bull''; Strool, perhaps, of ''strait'' (= narrow) and ''cruel,'' or ''stool'' and ''drool''. "Fleshway" might suggest a reference to Samuel Butler's ''The Way of All Flesh,'' which was not published until 1903, but it seems more likely to go back to [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20041027.shtml a biblical phrase] associated with death.

Using the onomatapeia technique such as in the ''Gravity's Rainbow'' law firm, we start to get 'Some Bull, is ('t) Drool And.......Help needed! How about "some bull's strool and fleshway." Strool being the portmanteau of stool and drool, and fleshway being the meaty part of the flushway (g.i. tract, anus) -- you know, something like bullshit with the consitency of diarrhea.

Incidentally, Strool is an actual surname as well as the name of a town in South Dakota.

By the way, Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (see "all against all" entry toward the top of this page) is also the source of Salitieri et al. ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," describing the life of human beings in their primitive state). 

'''vestiary''' 
Of, or relating to, clothing.

==Page 36==

'''Fairgoers would see the ship overhead and yet not see it''' 
Useful property for a surveillance platform.

'''Lew Basnight''' 
"Bas" is French for "low", though "bas nuit" means nothing in French.

A detective named 'Lew' reminds us (who is "us"?) of Ross Macdonald's character Lew Archer which in turn recalls another detective, Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade in San Francisco detective agency Spade & Archer. This may be a bad pun on 'lube-ass night' and also might refer to the incident causing Lew to be shunned by his peers.

[[image:beaver-on-the-brain.jpg|thumb|Beaver on the Brain T-Shirt|right]]Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, working a whole sexual angle, naming his character after the phrase "BAS night," meaning a boys' night out, "BAS" being an acronym for "Bitches Ain't Shit" from the [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drdre/bitchesaintshit.html "song" by Dr. Dre] (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). And, hey, Lew meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie Shaft? Twat crossed w/clit? A-and isn't that tetractys an inverted beaver?), where he meets Yashmeen, a ''very'' sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode ([[ATD 171-198#Page 183|p. 183]]) (Beavers, fercrissakes!). Perhaps something worth following up ... or not!

It is possible Basnight is an Americanization of the German "Fasnacht". "Fastnacht or Fasnacht is the pre-Lenten carnival in Alemannic folklore in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and western Austria. It is also known in parts of Pennsylvania Dutch Country as Fauschnaut Day and is celebrated on the day before Ash Wednesday, or the last Tuesday before Lent." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasnacht]

"A likely derivation is from PIE pwo- "purify" (cognate to pava-mana), or alternatively connected with Middle High German vaselen "prosper, bud" and interpreted as a fertility rite."

Fasnacht Day is known in English as Shrove Tuesday. "The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday] All of this seems to tally well with the Basnight character.

Another pun theory: on page 38, Lew is described as being in an ignorance "black as night." This can be abbreviated to "Basnight."
Lew is pronounced "loo," which of course is the British toilet.
Lew Basnight then means, "toilet, black as night." Just a thought...

'''White City Investigations''' 
Since the White City dates from 01 May 1893, this ought to be later.

The name recalls the White Visitation of [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. Any connection?

==Page 37==
'''fictitiousness''' 
On this and the previous page, there is a question raised of whether the Chums are fictional. Or it could be saying that such fantastical sights as the airship are easy to miss at the fair.

It seems more likely that the comparison here is simply between that of the fair, a small, self-contained world of marvels (like all World's Fairs) and the "real world" outside its gates.

There is lots more going on (and it's ''lots'' more interesting). Consider these passages on pages 36-37:
*the . . . celebration possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and agency
*The harsh nonfictional world waited outside the White City's limits
*he (Lew) had not . . . heard of the Chums of Chance
*every boy knows the Chums of Chance
*you're not storybook characters. . . . Are you?
Too much back-and-forth about fiction to be '''just''' about the exposition and the real world. Some premises that are implicit here:
*The Chums know that they live in literature whether they have a "real" existence or not.
*They know their books are popular with an audience of boys. (Lindsay is surprised that Lew didn't read them earlier, not that he isn't reading them now.)
*Lew doesn't regard objective evidence (they are standing before him, he's ascended in their ship) as sufficient to rule out ambiguity (". . . Are you?").
*The lads are able to experience and act only in a quasi-fictitious environment. Off the fairgrounds (in the WCI office), Randolph gives nothing but answers scripted for him by National.
All this suggests that even the Chums aren't sure on what level they exist. They definitely have adventures, as recorded in their books, but they don't seem to have adventures ''not'' contained in the novels.
What will happen if they come to the end of a ''Chums'' book while we are still reading ''AtD''?

'''No more than Wyatt Earp or Nellie Bly''' 
See the next two entries. Earp had a "real" life but people remember him chiefly because of stories written about him (and by him through ghostwriters, [http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/zpub2000/sfentries&cmd=list&range=0,50&Title~=E&cmd=all&Id=98 link 1], [http://www.ferncanyonpress.com/tombston/robbery.shtml link 2]). Bly entertained masses of people by having adventures and then writing about them. Each "lived" through a body of literature.

'''Wyatt Earp''' 
(1848–1929), was a teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, and saloon-keeper in the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to Alaska. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp Wikipedia]

'''Nellie Bly''' 
(1864-1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Wikipedia]

'''Regarding Lew Basnight's malady...''' 
Again, there seems to be a character with a neurological illness; in this case it is presented as amnesia, but seizures also result in "lost time". (See comments on Miles' "electricity coming on" on page 24.) Such maladies are more common than one supposes, and can offer a glimpse of other-worldliness akin to that of hallucinogenics, and epileptics have, at times, been considered to have access to past or future lives.
:OR it could be the case that Lew has fallen through a crack in time-space and entered a parallel universe; in the previous universe (which he simply remembers as the past), he had not done anything wrong, which explains his perplexity. The same might be the case with Miles, which would be why he did not expect baskets of crockery near his feet. Such moving among worlds is a thread in this work.

'''making a point of pronouncing his name disrespectfully''' 
The only way it could be done is, apparently, by saying Lube Ass Night. Well, that or tone of voice.

'''the Upstate-Downstate Beast''' 
Illinois is one of three states with an Upstate, though one of them doesn't use the term Downstate (South Carolina divides itself into Upstate and Lowcountry). The nickname points to a traveling man, perhaps. "Moral horror," "denounced," "revulsion" probably fit with many crimes, though most of those would have led to a prison sentence and we don't have any information of Lew's serving time.

'''"Although the longer a fellow's name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from non-fiction."''' 
May express Pynchon's reaction to the press' treatment of him over the years. In 1964, when Pynchon heard that the ''New York Herald Tribune'' was writing an article about him, Pynchon wrote to his agent that he assumed the piece "will be riddled with the same lies, calumnies and all-around knavish disregard for my privacy" as previous articles. ("Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask," ''New York Times,'' 4 Mar 1998).

'''Wensleydale''' 
A type of cheese made in Yorkshire, England.

==Page 38==

'''"You have destroyed your name."''' 
Wensleydale using very strong language. He doesn't say "destroyed your reputation" or "discredited your name" but "''destroyed'' your name." Does anyone else see this as suggesting Lew's name was not Lew Basnight before his sin?

'''to plead with him to come back''' 
A strange response, that Troth should ask the Upstate-Downstate Beast to return to her. You would think she'd prefer him as far away as he could get.

'''one of your other wives''' 
A direct reference to Lew's sin, or is Troth just pelting Lew with anything that's in reach?

==Page 39==

'''kazoos''' 
This silly instrument appears in several Pynchon novels.

'''slow ritual movement''' 
Maybe tai chi, or anachronistic Gurdjieffian dance?

'''Drave''' 
Possibly a back formation from 'Dravidians,' referring to David Koresh's Branch Davidians.
: huh? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 16:23, 19 December 2006 (PST)
: I have to second that "huh?" This seems exceedingly improbable. [[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 06:15, 15 February 2007 (PST)
Another possibility is that Pynchon had in mind the Scottish noun "drave," which the OED defines as a "fishing expedition in which several men take part, each supplying a net and receiving a share of the profits made. Later, A haul (of fish); also, a shoal." This resonates with the evangelical role that Drave plays (Cf. Matthew 4:18, where Jesus addresses Peter and Matthew, "And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.")

It should be noted, though, that there is also a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drave Drave river] in south central Europe, though there seems to be little textual evidence to support this association.

'''Saratoga chips''' 
Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs, NY, and were often called Saratoga chips in the 19th century.

'''Esthonia Hotel''' 
Atonia is a lack of normal muscle tension, but also, "A frightening form of paralysis that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, most often upon falling asleep or waking up. Commonly called sleep paralysis, the condition is due to an ill-timed disconnection between the brain and the body." [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9811 Definition] This could mean that the hotel in question is nothing more than an internal hallucination of Basnight's, further suggesting that his problem is one of neurological rather than simply moral or spiritual cause.
:Could be, but at the same time let's not overlook the plain reading: Esthonia is an obsolete spelling of the country ''Estonia.''

'''''liable for criminal penalties''''' 
Law and the legal profession so far appear in AtD more than any other Pynchon novel (perhaps save ''The Crying of Lot 49''), and so far, like here, in a negative or confusing light, perhaps as part of the establishment Pynchon seems to rail against in the novel.

==Page 40==

'''lofty regions no high-iron pioneer had yet dared''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainwright_Building In the early 1890s] anything taller than about 10 stories would have qualified.

'''remembrance stick''' 
Similar to keisaku in Zen Buddhism, an attempt by a sensei to alert students to their mindlessness in zazen (sitting meditation), usually administered by a stick. An English translation is stick of compassion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyosaku [Wikipedia]]

Lew's performance of commonplace and strange chores is also similar to the way Zen training can proceed for novitiates.

==Page 41==

'''you keep bouncing free. Avoiding penance and thereby definition''' 
It is hard to tie Drave down philosophically. No connection between sin and penance, penance as destiny, penance happens or doesn't, and now this idea that penance ''defines'' one's existence.

==Page 42==

'''Spring arrived''' 
We've seen Lew pretty well through a year: summertime (p. 38) when Troth followed him to Chicago, autumn (p. 40) when he checked in at the Esthonia, winter (p. 41) as his bank account starved, now in the spring his moment of grace.

'''scorcher cap''' 
The cap of an early bicycling enthusiast. According to [http://www.velorution.biz/?p=1288 this site]:

:"In […]1892 [… a] bicyclist to be considered genuine had to be dressed in bicycle clothes. A man had to wear bicycle pants which were baggy at the top and tight to the legs below. Then he had to have bicycle socks and shoes. The shoes were made of canvass. Then he had to have a loose fitting grey colored short which we would designate now as a sport shirt. Then on his head he had to wear a tight fitting cap with a long bill in front, the longer the better up to a certain ceiling length. With this outfit and a bicycle with drop handlebars he was ready to appear in public as a real cyclist. If he could make 20 miles an hour on a good track he was called a 'scorcher,' the idea being that he was going so fast that he would scorch at least the end of his nose if nothing else."

'''shirtwaists with huge shoulders''' 
[[image:shirtwaist.jpg|thumb|caption|Shirtwaists|150px|right]]Fashionable the year of the Fair, the shirtwaist is a dress with a bodice (waist) like a tailored shirt and an attached straight or full skirt, the huge shoulders being the sort of "puffy" look of the sleeves. They are now called blouses. Compare Chevrolette McAdoo's outfit, [[ATD_26-56#Page 26|p. 26]].

'''He understood that things were exactly what they were.''' 
This sentence sums up the entire experience at the Esthonia hotel, which seems to be a Zen-like initiation. Here, Lew Basnight seems to have attained some form of enlightenment, and the description ("a condition...which he later came to think of as grace"), along with this sentence, are almost textbook examples of Zen enlightenment. No lights flash, no changes are seen; one merely understands that things are what they are. After this experience, he leaves the hotel, and no longer needs to be there. He then embarks on his new career, in part because of his extreme ability to notice minute details; something that he was not said to have had before.
:The sentence can also serve as a guide to readers of ''AtD.'' Even when it is tempting to speculate that "this paragraph is about Richard Nixon" or protest that "you can't see Sirius on a summer evening," it is worth the effort to let the text mean what it means.

==Page 43==

'''transfigured''' 
In Lew's time of grace, he shows a changed face.

'''leisurely rips through the fabric of the day''' 
See below

==Page 44==

'''He had learned to step to the side of the day.''' 
Through the book there are juxtapositions of things with and against the day (the 'title motif'). Here, we are told that Lew has learned to step "to the side" of the day. Possibly he is able to enter another plane? This is possible considering the dream-like hotel sequence on previous pages.
:I think that the "other plane" interpretation is a bit of a stretch. The passage seems to imply that Lew has learned to will and maintain a degree of detachment from his surroundings, perhaps a relinquishment of his perceived control over events or his attempts to control them.
: -- I don't see it as a stretch if we accept that he now recognizes that there are alternate, parallel, universes.

'''it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts''' 
The quotes here may be to distinguish the fact that while technically living in Chicago, Lew sometimes exists or moves within a place or plane that others also living there don't see, or have access to.
:Yes, or universes rather than planes.

==Page 45==

'''two-headed eagle''' 
As Holy Roman Emperor, the Austro-Hungarian emperor bore a two-headed eagle (each head crowned) as part of his arms. The Tsar of Russia also used a two-headed eagle, but it was triply crowned (one crown between the heads). The Serbian two-headed eagle appeared on a shield with one crown above it, and the Montenegrin one had a single crown between the heads. Other details of the envelope would serve to disambiguate.

'''Trabants''' 
"Trabanten" (German for 'satellites') originally - during the Thirty Years' War - were lightly armed foot soldiers; later this term was used for servants and/or bodyguards of high-ranking persons.

'''"have a lawyer explain civil liability to you"''' 
Again, law.

'''gumshoe''' 
Perhaps a bit too early to use this term; the Dictionary of American Slang dates it as "by 1906".

'''a couple a thousand hunkies''' 
"Hunkies" was a slur against Hungarians and other eastern Europeans. The word may have morphed into "honkies."

'''Francis Ferdinand''' 
This is indeed the same Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in 1914 triggered World War I. At the time of his appearance in ''AtD'', he would have been 30, and his two passions throughout young adulthood and his 20s were travel and hunting (it is estimated that he shot more than 5,000 deer in his lifetime). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Wikipedia entry]. He did indeed attend the Chicago Exposition. [http://columbus.iit.edu/bookfair/ch27.html]

Click for [[The Habsburgs in Against the Day]]...

See the annotation about Austria-Hungary on the next page.

'''shive artist''' 
Someone proficient with a knife (shive=knife or razor).

'''to rewrite history''' 
Hold on, '''re'''write? As Vibe did on [[#rewrite|page 33,]] Privett seems to reason that history has already been decided and some action would change it rather than generate a valid new history.

==Page 46==

'''"staff," a mixture of plaster and hemp fibers''' 
[http://ftp.apci.net/~truax/1904wf/WF_Mem-Staff.htm Pix and info... ]

[http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html One source] says it was jute, not hemp.

According to [http://www.buildingstonemagazine.com/summer-06/historic.html ''Building Stone'' magazine,] the buildings were meant to be painted in bright colors, but the Chicago climate put the kibosh on that. Even keeping them white called for continuous repainting.

The Museum of Science and Industry is the only structure surviving from the exposition. Built as the Palace of Fine Arts, it started out faced in staff but was later [http://www.aviewoncities.com/chicago/museumofscienceandindustry.htm rebuilt] to the original exterior design in limestone and marble.

'''to counterfeit some deathless white stone''' 

Given the many references throughout ''AtD'' to "white" and "stones" to ''counterfeit'' a ''deathless'' white stone seems portentous.

'''"In Austria," the Archduke was explaining, ". . . the Chicago Stockyards might possibly be rented out . . . for a weekend's amusement"''' 

Pynchon continues his linking of the Stockyard killing-floor with the genocidal horrors of the 20th Century, it seems. See above. Heidegger (sic) made this connection somewhere and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maxwell_Coetzee J.M Coetze's] novel ''Elizabeth Costello'' uses it in a key chapter that was published separately.

'''beaters who drive the animals toward the hunters . . . waiting to shoot them''' 
Skillful use of ambiguity: waiting to shoot the animals or the beaters?

'''"Hungarians occupy the lowest level of brute existence"''' 
Even if the quote might be fictive, the Archduke's characterization is close to the point. Franz Ferdinand, a dour reactionary with aggressive ideas in foreign policy, had the reputation of an avowed Hungarophobe. The Compromise of 1867 created a dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which the Archduke sought to transform in a "trialistic" way, giving an enivsioned southern Slav union of Croatia (which was united in a sub-confederation with Hungary), Bosnia and Dalmatia a status similar to that of the Kingdom of Hungary. Note how the Czechs, a population about twice as large as southwestern Slavs, were omitted from this scheme. The idea was evidently to weaken the Hungarian establishment, and recentralize power in Vienna.

'''Mannlicher''' 
A double-barreled rifle designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher. It is reported that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had several of these made special for him.

Interestingly enough, the rifle is also mentioned in ''Green Hills of Africa'' and ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'' by Ernest Hemingway, who used it extensively on hunting.

Franz was eventually assassinated in Sarajevo. Coincidentally (?), fellow assassinee JFK was initially claimed to have been a victim of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher rifle.

==Page 47==

'''K&K Special Security''' 
"K&K" stands for "Kaiserlich und Königlich," German for "imperial and royal (kingly)," to indicate the Austrian two titles of the ruler of the Dual Monarchy: King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserlich_und_königlich Wikipedia entry].

'''Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit''' 
This is not a German word as far as I know and most likely not even a degenerate Habsburg or one of his officers would have used it (but then I haven't read Franz Ferdinand's account of his travels...). Sounds more like some Babelfish machine translation of "pastry-depravity" to me. I wonder what the German translator will make of this. My guess is, s/he will not make a "typical German" combined noun out of it, but turn the phrase to be able to use an adverb like "mehlspeisennarrisch" instead (what with in Austria and Bavaria there is a word for (mostly sweet) pastry: "Mehlspeise" (literally "flour-meal), and "narrisch" is Austrian/Viennese for being (slightly) mad). But then, of course, there might be a pun intended I as a bad english-speaker just dont get. Maybe via the pronounciation? Check out this [http://www.dict.cc/?s=Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit dictionary], head for "continue searching" and press "voice output" - voila, thats what "Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit" sounds like.

The term probably is made up, but the meaning is more like "shameful addiction to cookie dough." In the context of detectives, what may be happening here is this: The Austrians have heard the canard that American policemen are addicted to doughnuts, but they misunderstand both ''doughnut'' and ''addicted.''

Another possibility: Austrians have read that American detectives will do anything for dough.

'''Boll Weevil Lounge''' 
The boll weevil, a destructive cotton pest, first arrived in America (via Mexico) in 1892, only one year before the opening section of ATD. It is a fitting name for a "Negro Bar" as the boll weevil is the subject of dozens of blues songs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil [Wikipedia]]

1893 is too soon for the songs and probably for the lounge too. Cotton was still king in the South; the big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_States_and_International_Exposition_%281895%29 Atlanta exposition] was two years in the future, and the economic dislocation had not properly begun. The boll weevil songs date from the teens-20s and later.

'''...the only place in Chicago a man could find a decent orange phosphate...''' 
A reference to the modern stereotype that black people like orange soda, here called a phosphate.

==Page 48==

'''Wassermelone''' 
Watermelon; another black stereotype...

'''grip cars''' 
The lead cars in cable-car systems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_City_Railway [Wikipedia]]

'''''deine Mutti'', as you would say''' 
Franz Ferdinand is attempting to engage the patrons of the Boll Weevil Lounge in a game of "the dozens", an insult contest in which opponents make fun of each other's mothers. "The dozens" has its origins in the New Orleans slave trade. As with the boll weevil, "the dozens" is closely associated with blues music. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dozens [Wikipedia]]

'''the World's Fair, not the World's Ugly''' 
A fairly sophisticated pun, if F.F.'s English is so rudimentary.

'''''...'st los, Hund?''''' 
German for "'s up, dog?"

'''All Pimps Look Alike to Me''' 
An early rag by Ernest Hogan was entitled All Coons Look Alike to Me; "Hogan was evidently not the originator of the song's lyrics, having appropriated them after hearing a pianist in a Chicago salon playing a song titled "All Pimps Look Alike to Me"". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hogan See this article.] 
For more "coon" references see text and annotations: [[#Page_33|page 33]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and especially [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424]].

''Who's usin' who? What should we do? Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too'' 
(Icky Thump - White Stripes) / not relevant to this entry but worth listening to.

'''scapegrace''' 
Scoundrel.

'''And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!''' 
WWI?

Was Franz Ferdinand some sort of ruthless cosmopolitan at the time being? You can really see it from his ATD passages.

'''keester''' 
Buttocks.

==Page 49==

'''Kinsley's''' 
A famous steakhouse at 105-107 Adams St. in downtown Chicago. The building was erected in 1885.

'''At first Lew took it for a church''' 
This could be an allusion to the film, ''On The Waterfront'', and a similar scene when Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is sent by Johnny Friendly and Co. to eavesdrop on a meeting being held in a church by local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) along with workers from the docks who are fed up with Friendly and the Mob, especially in light of a recent death. Social themes of film seem apt as well. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_waterfront].

Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich)incidentally was a product of this milieu, born in Chicago in 1912 to a Serb steelworker father and Czech seamstress mother. The Sekulovich family hails from Herzegovina.

'''Welsbach mantles''' 
One of the most important advances in the history of lighting, the Welsbach mantle (for a period so ubiquitous it became more commonly known simply as 'gas mantle') was first sold commercially in 1892 and quickly spread throughout Europe. It remained an important part of street lighting until the widespread introduction of electric lighting in the early 1900s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle Wikipedia entry].

'''Reverend Moss Gatlin''' 
A fictional character. Is he connected to Rev. Cherrycoke? They are both Reverends with strong political opinions and you can hear Pynchon's voice here very strong.

Possible allusion to Reverend Fr. John M. Corridan, the real-life counterpart of Father Barry in ''On The Waterfront''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Corridan Wikipedia]

Some real, or anyway nonfictional, anarchist preachers:
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard107.html Thomas Olney,] 17th-century Baptist anarchist who was influential in Rhode Island
*[http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol055/96047023.html Rudolf Rocker] (1873-1958), nicknamed the "anarchist rabbi"
*[http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis,] Dutch minister who came to anarchism in 1897
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/critics/mckinley/chap4.html Albert Dahlquist and Joseph A. Wildman,] caught up in persecutions after the McKinley assassination (Dahlquist was nearly lynched; Wildman was tarred and feathered)
*[http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301208.shtml Father Frank Morales,] participant in Portland anti-globalization demonstrations
*[http://www.deadanarchists.org/anton.html Hugh O. Pentecost,] who in 1889 was slated to address a meeting in commemoration of the Haymarket; Philadelphia authorities suppressed the gathering

'''fascinators''' 
Hair adornments. [http://www.ribbonsandpearls.co.uk/catalogue/fascinators/fascinator_hair_accessories_intro.htm [pix]]

'''bearing the insults of the day''' 
See notes on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''Blake's Jerusalem''' 
The original lines From William Blake's poem are:

I will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England's green and pleasant land.

'''Fierce as the winter's tempest . . . Death's for the bought and sold!''' 
This lyric does not come up in a Google search. It doesn't flow like any other lyric in Pynchon but reads like a rather good hymn text. No variations in the meter, no words broken for the sake of rhyme, no punctuation to show lengthened or chopped syllables. And yet thematically it is a seamless fit with the text around it. Are the lines original in ''AtD,'' or can their source be identified?

==Page 50==

'''Picardy third''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy_third Wikipedia entry]

==Page 51==

'''deadfalls''' 
Low points where refuse collects? Cf. Pynchon's story, Low-Lands?[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deadfalls [def]]

'''prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate''' 
Coupled with the cover blurb Pynchon wrote: "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction." Could ''Against the Day'' be Pynchon's prophecy of a future America?

[[image:we_never_sleep.jpg|thumb|175px|right]]'''The Unsleeping Eye''' 
Reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency. Pinkerton's National Detective Agency had a logo with an eye in the center, and below it read, "We Never Sleep." See also [[ATD_1-25#Page_13|page 13]].

'''bay rum''' 
A type of cologne or after-shave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_rum Wikipedia article]

==Page 52==

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Lew Basnight's temporary presence on the airship may be the first clue as to why it's called ''Inconvenience''. Perhaps his growing sympathy for the anarchists will lead to greater involvement by him, the Chums, or at least the book in portraying the anarchist movement, which is viewed as an inconvenience to the ruling classes. Pynchon may consider his novel's message, similarly, as an inconvenient truth about America's past, present or both.

:I thought it was just a polysyllable that sounds stately but means the opposite.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:18, 5 December 2006 (PST)

In ''Mason & Dixon'', the willful reality of other people are referred to as inconveniences more than once.

'''the whiteness of the place nearly unbearable''' 
Causing an effect something like snow blindness.

'''some weeks till the fair closes''' 
30 October 1893.

'''our future's all a blank''' 
Whoever the Chums get their orders from, they have not received any new ones yet. They look ahead and see a blank page.

'''Freddie Turner''' 
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 - 1932) was, with Charles A. Beard, the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He is best known for ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', an essay which describes his views on how the idea of the frontier shaped the American character, and how the frontier drove American history and America's westward expansion. Excerpt: "In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization."
[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html eText here...]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Wikipedia]

==Page 53==

'''Here's where the Trail comes to an end at last''' 
With the advent of the railroad, the West changed dramatically. Chicago became the stockyards and slaughterhouse of America, and cowboys only funneled their cattle in that direction, no longer simply following them on the range or leading them to more local places of slaughter. The cowboy had become a cog in the wheel of a mechanism of death.

'''Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches''' 
Mentioned in 1911 Britannica article 'Slaughter-house' [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Slaughter-house [etext]]

'''charabanc''' 
An open-topped bus for tourists.

'''"The frontier ends and disconnection begins"''' 
Here, the free cowboy myth of Buffalo Bill's show is replaced by the grim reality of the stockyard worker.

'''Cause and effect''' 
A major theme in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''How the dickens do I know?''' 
A possible reference to the novels of Charles Dickens, who critiques in such works as ''Hard Times'' (1854) the onset of urban decay, and the choked living and working conditions of the proletariat as the Industrial Revolution steams onward. 
Or it may just be a standard euphemism; polite speakers were enjoined not to name the Devil.

'''hob-raising years''' 
Hell-raising years; his early years. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hob Definition of "hob".]

==Page 54==

'''where you knew you could stand and piss would flow two ways at once.''' 
The Professor is talking about growing up in Colorado, where the Continental Divide passes. It would be logical to suggest that, at the precise location of this divide, piss would indeed flow both east and west.
:For Easterners at least, it's a well-known tourist ritual to pee right on the line.

The best place to do this, for tourists, is at Cache La Poudre Lake, headwaters of the Colorado River on Trail Ridge Road (US 34) in Rocky Mountain National Park—it is exactly on the Divide, and water exits to East and West, Atlantic and Pacific.

'''into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well''' 
Describing Lew's movement now, but a few pages previously that of the stock at the slaughterhouse.

'''Cheerfulness . . . a precarious commodity''' 
The original narrator of the Chums passages has definitely been pushed aside now. They seem to be in a totally different book.

==Page 55==

'''. . . they continued in a fragmented reverie which, . . . often announced some change in the works''' 
Good to notice when the Chums get like this again: i.e. unfocused, depressed, without direction, it may lead to patterns in the plot.
:No Fair, no orders, no adventures: The Chums are between books!

'''Speculation began to fill the day.''' 
See note on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''the ill-famed Hawk''' 
In deepening autumn it is ''rehearsing'' "swift descent, merciless assault, rapture of souls"; at the end of the passage "the temperature head[s] down." The Hawk appears to be a metaphor for winter or its storms. ([http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_hawk/ possible definition?]) 
:That is pretty conclusive. ''Hawk'' an established and documented metaphor for the winter wind.
The Hawk is also one of the ubiquitous birds of prey in ATD. The words showing its lethal effect and the drop in temperature are Pynchon themes
for evil. Evil comes from the lands of low temperatures. See GR.

In addition to these meanings, TRP also demonstrates local knowledge here, as the Hawk is the name of a specific wind in Chicago. The Hawk is the name of a northeast wind, one that comes off Lake Michigan usually in the spring. A meteorologist will tell you that a northeast wind is somewhat unusual, contrary to (or against) the prevailing winds that generally come from the west. The effects of the Hawk can be seen at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where centerfield is on the northeast corner of Sheffield and Waveland. When the Hawk is blowing hits that, given a usual southwest wind, have a chance at being home runs will die in the outfield and are easily caught. The Hawk is a reminder that, though winter has left town, it will be back. The wind has a very particular resonance for a Chicagoan, and it's very impressive that Pynchon, not a native, should make use of it, especially in such an offhand manner.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 358-373

2008-09-07T01:52:20Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 361 */ cleanup - too much of a stretch

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 358==

'''Camp Bird''' 
Camp Bird Mine, Ouray, Ouray County, CO, is a gold-zinc-silver-lead-copper mine operated from 1896 to 1990. It located six miles south of Ouray and produced yearly 1.5 million ounces of gold and 4 million ounces of silver until 1990. [http://www.mindat.org/loc-8702.html Camp Bird].

'''Archie Dipple''' 
???

'''". . . camel herd imported years ago . . ."''' 
Camels were imported in 1855 for use by the U.S. Army as pack animals. They were quite capable, but the Army eventually abandoned them around the Civil War. Those that escaped became a feral population that survived in the Southwest until 1941. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Camel_Corps Wikipedia]

'''kids in cylindrical hats''' 
hotel pageboys. [http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=hotel+pageboy pix]

==Page 359==

'''bunco-steerer''' 
A con man or fraudster, but the use here seems less malicious than usual.

'''Macking for a mack''' 
Pimping for a pimp. Mack: a pimp (from English ''mackerel'' or French ''maquereau'').

'''Karl Marx''' 
Karl Marx (1818-83) German socialist and economist, founder of modern international Communism. Based on study of the French Revolution, together with fellow exile, Friedrich Engels (1920-95), they wrote the [http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html ''Communist Manifesto''] (1848), a masterpiece of political proganganda. In 1867, Marx published [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital ''Das Kapital''], an extensive treatise on political economy, in German. The book is a critical analysis of capitalism and its practical economic application and also, in part, a critique of other related theories. Its first volume was published in 1867. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx Wikipedia entry]

==Page 360==

'''Sean O'Farrells''' 
"The popular Shawn O'Farrell was created in Butte, Montana, a straight shot of whiskey followed with a glass of cold beer; it gave birth to the boilermaker." From this [http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/old_west/102390 website]

'''army "A" tents''' 
A-Frame tents are canvas tents supported by a vertical pole at either end and a cord or horizontal pole between the two along the top. When viewed from the entrance end, they form a triangle, hence the name.
[http://coonriver.com/tent.jpg Image of Civil War era A-Frames.]

==Page 363==

'''the Wall''' 
Death?

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Kids (Spanish).

'''calico recital''' 
I.e., wife's conventional plea.

'''side o' beef''' 
She is both rhyming on his name and comparing him to something that one ''hangs.''

'''. . . want to do nothing but be down at them famous little feet''' 
Like any self-respecting foot fetishist. Pynchon's use of the foot fetish trope goes back to [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2 ''The Crying of Lot 49''] ("I Want to Kiss Your Feet" by Sick Dick and the Volkswagens), but is most [[F#footfetish|panoramically displayed]] in ''Against the Day''.

==Page 364==

'''Denver''' 
Actually mine school at Golden, 15 miles west?

'''purple... orange''' 
(Clashing colors keep turning up as a motif.)

'''January colt''' 
From the Racecourse Association:
All racehorses are given the nominal birthday of January 1st. Thus a "two-year-old" born in June and one born in January of the same year are considered to be of the same age for the purposes of satisfying the conditions of some races re: weight carried. In reality, the January horse may be considered to have a significant advantage in terms of physical development at this early stage in its career.

'''Borrasca''' 
Borrasca in Spanish means storm, squall, depression, or area of low pressure. But apparently it can also mean an exhausted mine, and 'Going borrasca' means "becoming mined-out". Interestingly, this is very close to the English word 'borassic', ie. out of cash. This comes from Cockney Rhyming Slang: 'boracic lint' meaning 'skint', ie without any money.

==Page 365==

'''Bridget McGonigal''' 
a slide in the San Juans named after a mine owner's wife.
:A real feature?

'''to fill the day''' 
(Day motif.)

==Page 366==

'''sled''' 
(Cf Dally and Frank.)

'''Jake''' 
Okay (slang).

'''dead and gone, and therefore born again''' 
Several characters in ''AtD'' have a similar experience—Lew Basnight on page 185 is an example.

==Page 367==

'''Thrapston Cheesely III''' 
???

'''Madame Aubergine''' 
"Aubergine" is French for eggplant. Cf. p. 67, "'my little eggplant.'"

'''Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin''' 
???

'''Yup Toy''' 
Expensive yuppie gadget, eg iPod.

'''naphtha-light''' 
Obscure fuel-into-light motif variant.

==Page 368==

'''$3.50-a-quart''' 
About $75 today.

Compare to p.92 where $3.50 is given as a day's wage.

'''an exquisite''' 
one who is overly fastidious in dress or ornament.

'''Monsieur Peychaud''' 
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. [http://www.gumbopages.com/food/beverages/sazerac.html weblink]

'''Sazeracs''' 
A New Orleans cocktail. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sazerac Wikipedia entry].

'''Bob Stockton''' 
???

'''Absinthe Frappés''' 
Read about absinthe in America at [http://www.oxygenee.com/absinthe-americas.html The Virtual Absinthe Museum].

'''...some form of zombie powder''' 
the most common ingredients of Haitian "poudres zombi" [http://science.howstuffworks.com/zombie1.htm according to this website] are [http://amphibiaweb.org/cgi/amphib_query?rel-genus=like&rel-species=like&rel-common_name=like&rel-family=equals&rel-ordr=equals&rel-isocc=like&rel-description=like&rel-distribution=like&rel-life_history=like&rel-trends_and_threats=like&rel-relation_to_humans=like&rel-comments=like&query_src=aw_search_index&max=200&orderbyaw=Family&where-genus=Bufo&where-species=marinus&where-common_name=&where-family=Bufonidae&where-ordr=Anura&where-isocc=any&rel-species_account=matchboolean&where-species_account=&rel-declinecauses=equals&where-declinecauses=any&rel-iucn=equals&where-iucn=&rel-cites=equals&where-cites= Canetoad] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine DMT], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufotenin Bufotenin], heart [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid steroids]), [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pufferfish Pufferfish] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin Tetrotodoxin]) , [http://www.amphibiainfo.com/gallery/anura/hylidae/osteopilus/dominicensis/ Hispaniolan Common Tree Frog] (?) and "Human Remains"(?).

In Colombia the effects of an intoxication with [http://earthops.org/burundanga.html Burundanga] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopolamine Scopolamine]) are described as those of a [http://www.brugerforeningen.dk/bfny.nsf/0/A6CA2207359E19AFC12568C4005E94C8?OpenDocument&K=International%20News&S=UK Zombie Powder]

'''bengaline''' 
A fabric having a crosswise ribbed effect made of silk, wool, or synthetic fibers [http://www.bharattextile.com/dictionary/118 weblink].

'''Medici collar''' 
Medici collar is a flared, fan-shaped collar with a V-opening at the front popular in the 1540s and 1550s after similar styles seen in the portrait of Catherine de Medici in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_de%27_Medici Wikipedia].
:[http://www.bharattextile.com/dictionary/118 a few samples here] can't see any collar samples!

'''bastard chinchilla''' 
A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinchilla chinchilla] is a rodent with thick, valuable fur. Bastard here means 'false', so the cuffs resemble chinchilla fur but are not truly chinchilla.

'''glissandi''' 
Glissando (plural: glissandi) is a musical term that refers to either a continuous sliding from one pitch to another or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another. 
''(in fact, "glissando" should not be declined in the plural, so "glissandi" makes no sense at all. "glissando" would be the right word)''

'''whorehouse professor''' 
Just as it was for aeronauts, "Professor" was a customary title for pianists in low surroundings.

'''voodoo''' 
A polytheistic religion practiced chiefly by West-Indian Negroes, deriving principally from African cult worship and containing elements borrowed from the Catholic religion.

==Page 369==

'''cheurice sausage''' 
spelled "chaurice",[typo or variant?],it is a spicy Cajun pork sausage. See "POCHE'S, Smoked Chaurice" at Cajungrocer.com. There is
a Portuguese variant, a garlic sausage with another spelling yet: ''Chouriço.'' The Mexican equivalent is "Chorizo."

'''gumbo''' 
A spicy, hearty stew or soup, found typically on the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S. and very common in Louisiana and the Lowcountry around Charleston, South Carolina. It usually consists of rice and soup, the latter can contain seafood (shrimp, crab or crawfish), fowl (duck, chicken) and other meats.

'''étouffé''' 
Also, étouffée, literally means smothered, choked off. It is a Creole [[ATD_26-56#Page_29|seafood dish—see annotation to p. 29]]—a tangy tomato-based sauce, typically served over rice, similar to gumbo, very popular in New Orlean. The usual staple of an étouffée is crawfish, whereas shrimp or crabmeat are more often found in gumbos.

'''sassafras''' 
A genus of two species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae. It's root, bark, wood and leaves have many usages: perfumes, insect repellent, soft drink (root beer), dye, drugs and many others. The leaves are used for thickening sauces and soups, and when dried and ground are known as filé powder, a spice used in Cajun, Creole and other Louisiana cooking.

'''Italian Troubles''' 
The Mafia first gained American attention via New Orleans at that time. In 1890, a New Orleans Police Superintendent was killed. Nineteen Sicilians were indicted and aquitted (bribes and jury tampering were rumored). After the acquittal, a lynch mob dispatched most of the defendents.

'''''Va fongool-a''''' 
The original Italian phrase is "Va' a fare in culo" (usually shortened in "Vaffanculo", which in a southern italian pronounciation would in fact sound more or less "Vafangool'!" - Pynchon ear at its best!) meaning literally "go do it in the ass", or simply "fuck you."

'''Maman Tant Gras Hall''' 
Mama-So-Fat Hall.

Earnest, albeit slightly imprecise translation from the French (Mama So Fat would translate as "Maman Si Grasse" or "Maman Si Grosse"). I'll give you that it's hard to imagine it means anything else than "Fat Mama's Hall" but even in Cajun, it sounds a little off, because of the masculine form of the adjective "Gras", which clashes with the feminine "Maman". Just a little nitpicking from this French-speaking contributor...

'''''guignette''''' 
A [http://www.ornitho-digiscoping.tramelan.ch/pages_des_especes/chevalier_guignette.htm guignette] is a bird, a sandpiper. A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinguette guinguette] is a cabaret. Looks like another printing error.

'''"Dope" Breedlove and his Merry Coons''' 
Dope breeds love? Maybe Pynchon is lampooning the vicious stereotyping of the whole act, i.e. Those who named them consider them dumb,happy,love breeding black folk. For a partial list of coon references in ''AtD,'' [[ATD_26-56#Page_48|see annotation to p. 48.]]
 
:On the name Breedlove: the Breedlove family are the (African American) central characters in Toni Morrison's ''The Bluest Eye''. There's also a line in Tom Waits's song 'Cold, Cold Ground' that goes 'Call the cops on the Breedloves...'

'''cataplexy''' 
Sudden loss of muscle power following a strong emotional stimulus.

'''traps''' 
Equipment, gear, luggage. Trappings, as in dress, ornamental equipment or decoration.

==Page 370==

'''Ramos gin fizz''' 
Another New Orleans cocktail. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramos_gin_fizz Wikipedia entry].

'''Anarchist theory''' 
At the core of anarchist thought lies the contention that all forms of domination are hateful, that government is not just unnecessary but harmful. Early believers in England and France held that the workers should avoid involvement in parliamentary politics, and should liberate themselves by direct action on the streets and in the factories. As a result of an extreme reaction against the extreme autocracy of the Russian Empire, two famous Russian anarchists, Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76) and Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), proclaimed that anarchists organize in order to destroy states. German anarchist Max Sirner (1806-56) stressed the absolute rights of the individual to freedom from institutional control. This principle ruled out any chance of an effective anarchist organization. Anarchism inspired the birth of modern terrorism. The idea was that sensational acts of murder or destruction would publicize injustice, break the resolve of government policy, and shatter the nerve of the ruling elite. (taken from Norman Davies' ''Europe: A History'' (1996).)

[[image:Benjamin-Tucker2.jpg|thumb|right|Benjamin Tucker|150px]]'''Benjamin Tucker wrote of the Land League [...] in such glowing terms ...''' 
From 1881-1908, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker Benjamin Tucker] (1854-1939) published the anarchist journal ''Liberty'' with the telling subtitle ''The Mother, not the Daughter, of Order''. Tucker was an ardent defender of Individualist Anarchism. In an issue of ''Liberty'' he wrote:

:'''Ireland's true order: the wonderful Land League, the nearest approach, on a large scale, to perfect Anarchistic organization that the world has yet seen.''' An immense number of local groups, scattered over large sections of two continents separated by three thousand miles of ocean; each group autonomous, each free; each composed of varying numbers of individuals of all ages, sexes, races, equally autonomous and free; each inspired by a common, central purpose; each supported entirely by voluntary contributions; each obeying its own judgment; each guided in the formation of its judgment and the choice of its conduct by the advice of a central council of picked men, having no power to enforce its orders except that inherent in the convincing logic of the reasons on which the orders are based; all coordinated and federated, with a minimum of machinery and without sacrifice of spontaneity, into a vast working unit, whose unparalleled power makes tyrants tremble and armies of no avail. [Emphasis added]

[http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker.html Courtesy of flag.blackened.net]

[[Benjamin Tucker|Read more about Tucker and the Land League...]]

'''Land League''' 
The Irish Land League was an Irish political organization ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Land_league Land League]) founded by Michael Davitt in 1879. Its aim was to abolish the abuse and excesses of absentee landlords in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period (1870s, 1880s and 1890s) of the Land League's agitation is known in Ireland as the Land War, actually not a "war" but rather a prolonged period of civil unrest
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_war Land War]).

'''a Fenian''' 
The Fenian Brotherhood was initially founded in 1858 as the Irish Republican Brotherhood's American branch by John O'Mahony, James Stephens, and Michael Doheny, to overthrow the oppressive British Rule in Ireland. In the face of nativist suspicion, it quickly established an independent existence, although it still worked to gain Irish-American support for armed rebellion in Ireland.

Initially, O'Mahony ran operations in the USA, sending funds to Stephens and the IRB in Ireland, disagreement over O'Mahony's leadership led to the formation of two Fenian Brotherhoods in 1865. The U.S. chapter of the movement was also sometimes referred to as the IRB. After the failed invasion of Canada, it was replaced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_na_Gael Clan na Gael].

"Fenian" became a denigrating term for any group against British Imperialism in Ireland, and as the Irish are wont to do with the language forced on them, it was turned around to become a badge of honor, still used in the North (Unrepentant Fenian Bastard!) on t-shirts, mugs, and as the title of a song by Chris Byrne. The word is derived from the name of the warriors (''Fianna'') who protected the ''ARD RI'' (High King) of Eire.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian Wikipedia]

'''Jass''' 
An article in the OED on the etymology of the word Jazz by a Bob Rigter traces the word to French "Chasser" and says the word "jass' was in use in New Orleans around 1900!

:"The Grand Larousse de la Langua Française (1971) derives CHASSER from Classical Latin CAPTARE. It provides two related meanings: 'chercher à prendre' and 'pousser devant soi, obliger à avancer ... faire avancer rapidement'. Clearly, the first can be related to the sexual connotation, and the second to the rhythmical connotation of the word JASS as it was used in New Orleans round 1900."

"Ken Burns Films on Jazz"
Has anyone seen the Ken Burns film series on Jazz? According to this excellent film series the word Jass was actually derived from the word Jasmine. Jasmine was the favorite fragrance of the prostitutes in New Orleans. But what happened was that certain people would have fun with the Marquees. For example: A marquee would say "John Doe and his Jass Band". Someone would knock off the 'J' and it became "John Doe and his ass Band". For this reason they changed it from Jass to Jazz. I'm pretty sure this is covered in detail in the first or second volume of the Jazz film series.

[[Jazz / Jass|Discussion...]]

'''Wolfe Tone O'Rooney''' 
Although there is speculation that Pynchon had in mind [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobald_Wolfe_Tone Theobald Wolfe Tone] (1763-1798), an Irish revolutionary who is considered "the father of Irish Republicanism," it may also be a nod to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slim_Gaillard Slim Gaillard] (1916-1991), an early and eccentric jazz musician. [[Wolfe Tone O'Rooney|Read the discussion...]]
It isn't really a matter of speculation. The point is that O'Rooney comes from a family that has given him the names Wolfe Tone in honour of the Irish hero Theobald Wolfe Tone. Thomas Kenneally's Book 'The Great Shame' tells the story of the Irish revolutionaries who came to America and there are a few Wolfe Tones among them.

Wolf tones appear in music as well, as unwanted resonances in stringed instruments ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_tone Wikipedia]) and as artifacts of [http://www.albany.edu/piporg-l/tmprment.html temperament]. It is also the name of a famous Irish Traditional Music Group.

'''boycotting''' 
The word boycott arose in the autumn of 1880 to describe the action instituted by the Irish Land League towards those who incurred its hostility and is derived from the name of Captain Charles Boycott (1832-79), an English estate agent of an absentee landlord, the Earl Erne. Captain Boycott not only refused the protesting farmers' demand of rent reduction but also ejected them from the land. But in retaliation, the Land League engineered his social ostracism, proclaiming "Let every man in the parish turn his back on him; have no communications with him; have no dealings with him". His workers stopped working in his fields and in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him and the postman refused to delivery his mail. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott Wikipedia].

'''"Sligo and Tipperary"''' 
Known as "Rebel Counties" in the agitation against British rule in Ireland. Wikipedia pages for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sligo Sligo] and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipperary Tipperary].

'''. . . a metaphorical device whose tenor . . .''' 
Refers to I.A. Richards' identification of metaphor as two discrete elements, "tenor" and "vehicle." In "my love is a rose," "my love" is the tenor, "a rose," the vehicle (see the Wikipedia entry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor Metaphor] for more). The reference to tenor is a reminder that metaphor is itself a doubling, refractory device.

==Page 371==

'''Red Onion''' 
New Orleans night club on Rampart Street. In the "Back o Town" district, also called the "colored red light district," it was in its day quite a dive. Still in operation.

'''the Deux Espèces''' 
French: the Two Species. In Roman Catholic liturgy, ''la sainte Communion sous les deux espèces'' is "Holy Communion under both kinds," that is, when the communicant receives both the wine and the Host.

'''Flaco''' 
Skinny man (Spanish) or, as a ''nom de guerre,'' "Slim."

==Page 372==

'''"the more repressive the State is, the closer life under it resembles Death"''' 
An allusion to the theories of Mexican-American psychoanalyst Norman O. Brown, whose works, [http://www.amazon.com/Life-Against-Death-Psychoanalytical-Meaning/dp/0819561444/ref=pd_sim_b_1/002-6565825-6477661 ''Life Against Death''] (1959) and [http://www.amazon.com/Loves-Body-Reissue-Norman-Brown/dp/0520071069/sr=8-1/qid=1168179129/ref=sr_1_1/002-6565825-6477661?ie=UTF8&s=books ''Love's Body''] (1966) were an important influence on ''Gravity's Rainbow''. Brown, elaborating on and radicalizing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud%2C_Sigmund Freud's] theories of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_drive death drive] as discussed in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents ''Civilization and Its Discontents''] (1930), argues that all submission to the state necessarily constitutes a form of psychic repression. Brown saw this repression as resulting from a desire for and ultimately being tantamount to death.
:Those interested should seek out Lawrence C. Wolfley's excellent article "Repression's Rainbow: The Presence of Norman O. Brown in Pynchon's Big Novel," first published in ''PMLA'', Vol. 92, No. 5 (Oct., 1977), pp. 873-889, but reprinted frequently.

'''the bombing of the Teatro Lyceo during a performance of Rossini's opera ''William Tell''''' 
On November 7, 1893, the opening night of the season, an anarchist dissident threw two bombs into the Barcelona opera house; only one bomb exploded, killing twenty and injuring many more.

"Lyceum" (Catalan ''liceu,'' Spanish ''liceo'' or ''lyceo,'' French ''lycée,'' etc.) varies in meaning from country to country. [http://www.apologetics.org/glossary.html The original Lyceum] was the Athens garden where Aristotle taught. In some places the word refers to a secondary school, in others a cultural institution. Lyceum is among the most popular names for theaters in the English-speaking world.

Wikipedia has possibly redundant entries for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Teatre_del_Liceu the Opera House], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona Barcelona], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gioacchino_Rossini Rossini], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tell_%28opera%29 ''William Tell''], and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatori_Superior_de_M%C3%BAsica_del_Liceu Barcelona's Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu], the musical conservatory for which the Teatro was built.

'''Montjuich''' 
Catalan for "Hill of the Jews," a broad hill overlooking Barcelona, atop which a 17th century fortress sits. The fortress shelled the city in 1842 following a popular uprising and was used through the reign of Franco to hold political prisoners. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montjuich Wikipedia].

'''latifundios''' 
Spanish landed estates, a remnant of the Roman social order. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latifundios Wikipedia].

'''Anarchist Czolgosz had assassinated McKinley''' 
Leon Czolgosz, the son of a Polish immigrant in Detroit, MI, shot and mortally wounded President McKinley on September 6, 1901 in Buffalo, New York, at the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exhibition, a World's Fair held in Buffalo because it could be powered by electricity from Niagara Falls. McKinley died on September 16. Czolgosz was quickly found guilty and was executed by electrocution October 29, 1901. Wikipedia entries for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Czolgosz Czolgosz], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McKinley McKinley], and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_Exposition Pan-American Exposition].

'''the Paris Commune''' 
The "socialist government that briefly ruled Paris from 18 March (more formally from 26 March) to 28 May 1871," cited from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_commune Wikipedia].

==Page 373==

'''a single point . . . upon the next''' 
That is, a place that is beyond time, where the movement of the meridians (lines of longitude) have no effect. The only part of the earth where this is literally true is the axis. See, therefore, the Chums' journey through the Telluric Interior," pp. 114-18.

'''''Despedida''''' 
Goodbye (Spanish).

'''beignets''' 
New Orleans-style square, holeless doughnuts usually sprinkled with powdered sugar, famously served at Cafe Du Monde. [http://www.cafedumonde.com/ Website].

'''Bakunin''' 
Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Russian anarchist and revolutionary. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakunin Wikipedia entry].

'''Kropotkin''' 
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Russian prince and anarchist, author of ''Mutual Aid.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin Wikipedia entry].

'''Eusebio Gómez''' 
Wolfe Tone takes a historic name. In 1815 Eusebio Gómez received a royal land grant that included now-prosperous Jupiter Island, Florida. The land was later subdivided and, around 1900, a British development company acquired it.

'''''a sus órdenes''''' 
Sp., "at your service."

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 358-373

2008-09-07T01:47:43Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 360 */ cleanup

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 358==

'''Camp Bird''' 
Camp Bird Mine, Ouray, Ouray County, CO, is a gold-zinc-silver-lead-copper mine operated from 1896 to 1990. It located six miles south of Ouray and produced yearly 1.5 million ounces of gold and 4 million ounces of silver until 1990. [http://www.mindat.org/loc-8702.html Camp Bird].

'''Archie Dipple''' 
???

'''". . . camel herd imported years ago . . ."''' 
Camels were imported in 1855 for use by the U.S. Army as pack animals. They were quite capable, but the Army eventually abandoned them around the Civil War. Those that escaped became a feral population that survived in the Southwest until 1941. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Camel_Corps Wikipedia]

'''kids in cylindrical hats''' 
hotel pageboys. [http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=hotel+pageboy pix]

==Page 359==

'''bunco-steerer''' 
A con man or fraudster, but the use here seems less malicious than usual.

'''Macking for a mack''' 
Pimping for a pimp. Mack: a pimp (from English ''mackerel'' or French ''maquereau'').

'''Karl Marx''' 
Karl Marx (1818-83) German socialist and economist, founder of modern international Communism. Based on study of the French Revolution, together with fellow exile, Friedrich Engels (1920-95), they wrote the [http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html ''Communist Manifesto''] (1848), a masterpiece of political proganganda. In 1867, Marx published [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital ''Das Kapital''], an extensive treatise on political economy, in German. The book is a critical analysis of capitalism and its practical economic application and also, in part, a critique of other related theories. Its first volume was published in 1867. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx Wikipedia entry]

==Page 360==

'''Sean O'Farrells''' 
"The popular Shawn O'Farrell was created in Butte, Montana, a straight shot of whiskey followed with a glass of cold beer; it gave birth to the boilermaker." From this [http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/old_west/102390 website]

'''army "A" tents''' 
A-Frame tents are canvas tents supported by a vertical pole at either end and a cord or horizontal pole between the two along the top. When viewed from the entrance end, they form a triangle, hence the name.
[http://coonriver.com/tent.jpg Image of Civil War era A-Frames.]

==Page 361==

'''Pinkerton and public''' 
Assuming one is willing to take "Pinkerton" as a substitution for "private," it being a "private investigations firm," then this may be an allusion to Jurgen Habermas's work examining the distinction (and frequent lack thereof) between the public and private spheres of social interaction. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas Wikipedia on Habermas]. 
Pinkertons had their own set of laws - those based on the wishes of the Owners - of the mines, the mills, the factories - thus it's the law of the Bosses and public (civil) against the anarchist/socialist/IWW workingman who knows it's soon over for him and those like him.

==Page 363==

'''the Wall''' 
Death?

'''''chavalitos''''' 
Kids (Spanish).

'''calico recital''' 
I.e., wife's conventional plea.

'''side o' beef''' 
She is both rhyming on his name and comparing him to something that one ''hangs.''

'''. . . want to do nothing but be down at them famous little feet''' 
Like any self-respecting foot fetishist. Pynchon's use of the foot fetish trope goes back to [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2 ''The Crying of Lot 49''] ("I Want to Kiss Your Feet" by Sick Dick and the Volkswagens), but is most [[F#footfetish|panoramically displayed]] in ''Against the Day''.

==Page 364==

'''Denver''' 
Actually mine school at Golden, 15 miles west?

'''purple... orange''' 
(Clashing colors keep turning up as a motif.)

'''January colt''' 
From the Racecourse Association:
All racehorses are given the nominal birthday of January 1st. Thus a "two-year-old" born in June and one born in January of the same year are considered to be of the same age for the purposes of satisfying the conditions of some races re: weight carried. In reality, the January horse may be considered to have a significant advantage in terms of physical development at this early stage in its career.

'''Borrasca''' 
Borrasca in Spanish means storm, squall, depression, or area of low pressure. But apparently it can also mean an exhausted mine, and 'Going borrasca' means "becoming mined-out". Interestingly, this is very close to the English word 'borassic', ie. out of cash. This comes from Cockney Rhyming Slang: 'boracic lint' meaning 'skint', ie without any money.

==Page 365==

'''Bridget McGonigal''' 
a slide in the San Juans named after a mine owner's wife.
:A real feature?

'''to fill the day''' 
(Day motif.)

==Page 366==

'''sled''' 
(Cf Dally and Frank.)

'''Jake''' 
Okay (slang).

'''dead and gone, and therefore born again''' 
Several characters in ''AtD'' have a similar experience—Lew Basnight on page 185 is an example.

==Page 367==

'''Thrapston Cheesely III''' 
???

'''Madame Aubergine''' 
"Aubergine" is French for eggplant. Cf. p. 67, "'my little eggplant.'"

'''Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin''' 
???

'''Yup Toy''' 
Expensive yuppie gadget, eg iPod.

'''naphtha-light''' 
Obscure fuel-into-light motif variant.

==Page 368==

'''$3.50-a-quart''' 
About $75 today.

Compare to p.92 where $3.50 is given as a day's wage.

'''an exquisite''' 
one who is overly fastidious in dress or ornament.

'''Monsieur Peychaud''' 
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. [http://www.gumbopages.com/food/beverages/sazerac.html weblink]

'''Sazeracs''' 
A New Orleans cocktail. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sazerac Wikipedia entry].

'''Bob Stockton''' 
???

'''Absinthe Frappés''' 
Read about absinthe in America at [http://www.oxygenee.com/absinthe-americas.html The Virtual Absinthe Museum].

'''...some form of zombie powder''' 
the most common ingredients of Haitian "poudres zombi" [http://science.howstuffworks.com/zombie1.htm according to this website] are [http://amphibiaweb.org/cgi/amphib_query?rel-genus=like&rel-species=like&rel-common_name=like&rel-family=equals&rel-ordr=equals&rel-isocc=like&rel-description=like&rel-distribution=like&rel-life_history=like&rel-trends_and_threats=like&rel-relation_to_humans=like&rel-comments=like&query_src=aw_search_index&max=200&orderbyaw=Family&where-genus=Bufo&where-species=marinus&where-common_name=&where-family=Bufonidae&where-ordr=Anura&where-isocc=any&rel-species_account=matchboolean&where-species_account=&rel-declinecauses=equals&where-declinecauses=any&rel-iucn=equals&where-iucn=&rel-cites=equals&where-cites= Canetoad] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine DMT], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufotenin Bufotenin], heart [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid steroids]), [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pufferfish Pufferfish] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin Tetrotodoxin]) , [http://www.amphibiainfo.com/gallery/anura/hylidae/osteopilus/dominicensis/ Hispaniolan Common Tree Frog] (?) and "Human Remains"(?).

In Colombia the effects of an intoxication with [http://earthops.org/burundanga.html Burundanga] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopolamine Scopolamine]) are described as those of a [http://www.brugerforeningen.dk/bfny.nsf/0/A6CA2207359E19AFC12568C4005E94C8?OpenDocument&K=International%20News&S=UK Zombie Powder]

'''bengaline''' 
A fabric having a crosswise ribbed effect made of silk, wool, or synthetic fibers [http://www.bharattextile.com/dictionary/118 weblink].

'''Medici collar''' 
Medici collar is a flared, fan-shaped collar with a V-opening at the front popular in the 1540s and 1550s after similar styles seen in the portrait of Catherine de Medici in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_de%27_Medici Wikipedia].
:[http://www.bharattextile.com/dictionary/118 a few samples here] can't see any collar samples!

'''bastard chinchilla''' 
A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinchilla chinchilla] is a rodent with thick, valuable fur. Bastard here means 'false', so the cuffs resemble chinchilla fur but are not truly chinchilla.

'''glissandi''' 
Glissando (plural: glissandi) is a musical term that refers to either a continuous sliding from one pitch to another or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another. 
''(in fact, "glissando" should not be declined in the plural, so "glissandi" makes no sense at all. "glissando" would be the right word)''

'''whorehouse professor''' 
Just as it was for aeronauts, "Professor" was a customary title for pianists in low surroundings.

'''voodoo''' 
A polytheistic religion practiced chiefly by West-Indian Negroes, deriving principally from African cult worship and containing elements borrowed from the Catholic religion.

==Page 369==

'''cheurice sausage''' 
spelled "chaurice",[typo or variant?],it is a spicy Cajun pork sausage. See "POCHE'S, Smoked Chaurice" at Cajungrocer.com. There is
a Portuguese variant, a garlic sausage with another spelling yet: ''Chouriço.'' The Mexican equivalent is "Chorizo."

'''gumbo''' 
A spicy, hearty stew or soup, found typically on the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S. and very common in Louisiana and the Lowcountry around Charleston, South Carolina. It usually consists of rice and soup, the latter can contain seafood (shrimp, crab or crawfish), fowl (duck, chicken) and other meats.

'''étouffé''' 
Also, étouffée, literally means smothered, choked off. It is a Creole [[ATD_26-56#Page_29|seafood dish—see annotation to p. 29]]—a tangy tomato-based sauce, typically served over rice, similar to gumbo, very popular in New Orlean. The usual staple of an étouffée is crawfish, whereas shrimp or crabmeat are more often found in gumbos.

'''sassafras''' 
A genus of two species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae. It's root, bark, wood and leaves have many usages: perfumes, insect repellent, soft drink (root beer), dye, drugs and many others. The leaves are used for thickening sauces and soups, and when dried and ground are known as filé powder, a spice used in Cajun, Creole and other Louisiana cooking.

'''Italian Troubles''' 
The Mafia first gained American attention via New Orleans at that time. In 1890, a New Orleans Police Superintendent was killed. Nineteen Sicilians were indicted and aquitted (bribes and jury tampering were rumored). After the acquittal, a lynch mob dispatched most of the defendents.

'''''Va fongool-a''''' 
The original Italian phrase is "Va' a fare in culo" (usually shortened in "Vaffanculo", which in a southern italian pronounciation would in fact sound more or less "Vafangool'!" - Pynchon ear at its best!) meaning literally "go do it in the ass", or simply "fuck you."

'''Maman Tant Gras Hall''' 
Mama-So-Fat Hall.

Earnest, albeit slightly imprecise translation from the French (Mama So Fat would translate as "Maman Si Grasse" or "Maman Si Grosse"). I'll give you that it's hard to imagine it means anything else than "Fat Mama's Hall" but even in Cajun, it sounds a little off, because of the masculine form of the adjective "Gras", which clashes with the feminine "Maman". Just a little nitpicking from this French-speaking contributor...

'''''guignette''''' 
A [http://www.ornitho-digiscoping.tramelan.ch/pages_des_especes/chevalier_guignette.htm guignette] is a bird, a sandpiper. A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinguette guinguette] is a cabaret. Looks like another printing error.

'''"Dope" Breedlove and his Merry Coons''' 
Dope breeds love? Maybe Pynchon is lampooning the vicious stereotyping of the whole act, i.e. Those who named them consider them dumb,happy,love breeding black folk. For a partial list of coon references in ''AtD,'' [[ATD_26-56#Page_48|see annotation to p. 48.]]
 
:On the name Breedlove: the Breedlove family are the (African American) central characters in Toni Morrison's ''The Bluest Eye''. There's also a line in Tom Waits's song 'Cold, Cold Ground' that goes 'Call the cops on the Breedloves...'

'''cataplexy''' 
Sudden loss of muscle power following a strong emotional stimulus.

'''traps''' 
Equipment, gear, luggage. Trappings, as in dress, ornamental equipment or decoration.

==Page 370==

'''Ramos gin fizz''' 
Another New Orleans cocktail. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramos_gin_fizz Wikipedia entry].

'''Anarchist theory''' 
At the core of anarchist thought lies the contention that all forms of domination are hateful, that government is not just unnecessary but harmful. Early believers in England and France held that the workers should avoid involvement in parliamentary politics, and should liberate themselves by direct action on the streets and in the factories. As a result of an extreme reaction against the extreme autocracy of the Russian Empire, two famous Russian anarchists, Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76) and Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), proclaimed that anarchists organize in order to destroy states. German anarchist Max Sirner (1806-56) stressed the absolute rights of the individual to freedom from institutional control. This principle ruled out any chance of an effective anarchist organization. Anarchism inspired the birth of modern terrorism. The idea was that sensational acts of murder or destruction would publicize injustice, break the resolve of government policy, and shatter the nerve of the ruling elite. (taken from Norman Davies' ''Europe: A History'' (1996).)

[[image:Benjamin-Tucker2.jpg|thumb|right|Benjamin Tucker|150px]]'''Benjamin Tucker wrote of the Land League [...] in such glowing terms ...''' 
From 1881-1908, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker Benjamin Tucker] (1854-1939) published the anarchist journal ''Liberty'' with the telling subtitle ''The Mother, not the Daughter, of Order''. Tucker was an ardent defender of Individualist Anarchism. In an issue of ''Liberty'' he wrote:

:'''Ireland's true order: the wonderful Land League, the nearest approach, on a large scale, to perfect Anarchistic organization that the world has yet seen.''' An immense number of local groups, scattered over large sections of two continents separated by three thousand miles of ocean; each group autonomous, each free; each composed of varying numbers of individuals of all ages, sexes, races, equally autonomous and free; each inspired by a common, central purpose; each supported entirely by voluntary contributions; each obeying its own judgment; each guided in the formation of its judgment and the choice of its conduct by the advice of a central council of picked men, having no power to enforce its orders except that inherent in the convincing logic of the reasons on which the orders are based; all coordinated and federated, with a minimum of machinery and without sacrifice of spontaneity, into a vast working unit, whose unparalleled power makes tyrants tremble and armies of no avail. [Emphasis added]

[http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker.html Courtesy of flag.blackened.net]

[[Benjamin Tucker|Read more about Tucker and the Land League...]]

'''Land League''' 
The Irish Land League was an Irish political organization ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Land_league Land League]) founded by Michael Davitt in 1879. Its aim was to abolish the abuse and excesses of absentee landlords in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period (1870s, 1880s and 1890s) of the Land League's agitation is known in Ireland as the Land War, actually not a "war" but rather a prolonged period of civil unrest
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_war Land War]).

'''a Fenian''' 
The Fenian Brotherhood was initially founded in 1858 as the Irish Republican Brotherhood's American branch by John O'Mahony, James Stephens, and Michael Doheny, to overthrow the oppressive British Rule in Ireland. In the face of nativist suspicion, it quickly established an independent existence, although it still worked to gain Irish-American support for armed rebellion in Ireland.

Initially, O'Mahony ran operations in the USA, sending funds to Stephens and the IRB in Ireland, disagreement over O'Mahony's leadership led to the formation of two Fenian Brotherhoods in 1865. The U.S. chapter of the movement was also sometimes referred to as the IRB. After the failed invasion of Canada, it was replaced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_na_Gael Clan na Gael].

"Fenian" became a denigrating term for any group against British Imperialism in Ireland, and as the Irish are wont to do with the language forced on them, it was turned around to become a badge of honor, still used in the North (Unrepentant Fenian Bastard!) on t-shirts, mugs, and as the title of a song by Chris Byrne. The word is derived from the name of the warriors (''Fianna'') who protected the ''ARD RI'' (High King) of Eire.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian Wikipedia]

'''Jass''' 
An article in the OED on the etymology of the word Jazz by a Bob Rigter traces the word to French "Chasser" and says the word "jass' was in use in New Orleans around 1900!

:"The Grand Larousse de la Langua Française (1971) derives CHASSER from Classical Latin CAPTARE. It provides two related meanings: 'chercher à prendre' and 'pousser devant soi, obliger à avancer ... faire avancer rapidement'. Clearly, the first can be related to the sexual connotation, and the second to the rhythmical connotation of the word JASS as it was used in New Orleans round 1900."

"Ken Burns Films on Jazz"
Has anyone seen the Ken Burns film series on Jazz? According to this excellent film series the word Jass was actually derived from the word Jasmine. Jasmine was the favorite fragrance of the prostitutes in New Orleans. But what happened was that certain people would have fun with the Marquees. For example: A marquee would say "John Doe and his Jass Band". Someone would knock off the 'J' and it became "John Doe and his ass Band". For this reason they changed it from Jass to Jazz. I'm pretty sure this is covered in detail in the first or second volume of the Jazz film series.

[[Jazz / Jass|Discussion...]]

'''Wolfe Tone O'Rooney''' 
Although there is speculation that Pynchon had in mind [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobald_Wolfe_Tone Theobald Wolfe Tone] (1763-1798), an Irish revolutionary who is considered "the father of Irish Republicanism," it may also be a nod to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slim_Gaillard Slim Gaillard] (1916-1991), an early and eccentric jazz musician. [[Wolfe Tone O'Rooney|Read the discussion...]]
It isn't really a matter of speculation. The point is that O'Rooney comes from a family that has given him the names Wolfe Tone in honour of the Irish hero Theobald Wolfe Tone. Thomas Kenneally's Book 'The Great Shame' tells the story of the Irish revolutionaries who came to America and there are a few Wolfe Tones among them.

Wolf tones appear in music as well, as unwanted resonances in stringed instruments ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_tone Wikipedia]) and as artifacts of [http://www.albany.edu/piporg-l/tmprment.html temperament]. It is also the name of a famous Irish Traditional Music Group.

'''boycotting''' 
The word boycott arose in the autumn of 1880 to describe the action instituted by the Irish Land League towards those who incurred its hostility and is derived from the name of Captain Charles Boycott (1832-79), an English estate agent of an absentee landlord, the Earl Erne. Captain Boycott not only refused the protesting farmers' demand of rent reduction but also ejected them from the land. But in retaliation, the Land League engineered his social ostracism, proclaiming "Let every man in the parish turn his back on him; have no communications with him; have no dealings with him". His workers stopped working in his fields and in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him and the postman refused to delivery his mail. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott Wikipedia].

'''"Sligo and Tipperary"''' 
Known as "Rebel Counties" in the agitation against British rule in Ireland. Wikipedia pages for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sligo Sligo] and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipperary Tipperary].

'''. . . a metaphorical device whose tenor . . .''' 
Refers to I.A. Richards' identification of metaphor as two discrete elements, "tenor" and "vehicle." In "my love is a rose," "my love" is the tenor, "a rose," the vehicle (see the Wikipedia entry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor Metaphor] for more). The reference to tenor is a reminder that metaphor is itself a doubling, refractory device.

==Page 371==

'''Red Onion''' 
New Orleans night club on Rampart Street. In the "Back o Town" district, also called the "colored red light district," it was in its day quite a dive. Still in operation.

'''the Deux Espèces''' 
French: the Two Species. In Roman Catholic liturgy, ''la sainte Communion sous les deux espèces'' is "Holy Communion under both kinds," that is, when the communicant receives both the wine and the Host.

'''Flaco''' 
Skinny man (Spanish) or, as a ''nom de guerre,'' "Slim."

==Page 372==

'''"the more repressive the State is, the closer life under it resembles Death"''' 
An allusion to the theories of Mexican-American psychoanalyst Norman O. Brown, whose works, [http://www.amazon.com/Life-Against-Death-Psychoanalytical-Meaning/dp/0819561444/ref=pd_sim_b_1/002-6565825-6477661 ''Life Against Death''] (1959) and [http://www.amazon.com/Loves-Body-Reissue-Norman-Brown/dp/0520071069/sr=8-1/qid=1168179129/ref=sr_1_1/002-6565825-6477661?ie=UTF8&s=books ''Love's Body''] (1966) were an important influence on ''Gravity's Rainbow''. Brown, elaborating on and radicalizing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud%2C_Sigmund Freud's] theories of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_drive death drive] as discussed in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents ''Civilization and Its Discontents''] (1930), argues that all submission to the state necessarily constitutes a form of psychic repression. Brown saw this repression as resulting from a desire for and ultimately being tantamount to death.
:Those interested should seek out Lawrence C. Wolfley's excellent article "Repression's Rainbow: The Presence of Norman O. Brown in Pynchon's Big Novel," first published in ''PMLA'', Vol. 92, No. 5 (Oct., 1977), pp. 873-889, but reprinted frequently.

'''the bombing of the Teatro Lyceo during a performance of Rossini's opera ''William Tell''''' 
On November 7, 1893, the opening night of the season, an anarchist dissident threw two bombs into the Barcelona opera house; only one bomb exploded, killing twenty and injuring many more.

"Lyceum" (Catalan ''liceu,'' Spanish ''liceo'' or ''lyceo,'' French ''lycée,'' etc.) varies in meaning from country to country. [http://www.apologetics.org/glossary.html The original Lyceum] was the Athens garden where Aristotle taught. In some places the word refers to a secondary school, in others a cultural institution. Lyceum is among the most popular names for theaters in the English-speaking world.

Wikipedia has possibly redundant entries for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Teatre_del_Liceu the Opera House], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona Barcelona], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gioacchino_Rossini Rossini], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tell_%28opera%29 ''William Tell''], and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatori_Superior_de_M%C3%BAsica_del_Liceu Barcelona's Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu], the musical conservatory for which the Teatro was built.

'''Montjuich''' 
Catalan for "Hill of the Jews," a broad hill overlooking Barcelona, atop which a 17th century fortress sits. The fortress shelled the city in 1842 following a popular uprising and was used through the reign of Franco to hold political prisoners. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montjuich Wikipedia].

'''latifundios''' 
Spanish landed estates, a remnant of the Roman social order. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latifundios Wikipedia].

'''Anarchist Czolgosz had assassinated McKinley''' 
Leon Czolgosz, the son of a Polish immigrant in Detroit, MI, shot and mortally wounded President McKinley on September 6, 1901 in Buffalo, New York, at the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exhibition, a World's Fair held in Buffalo because it could be powered by electricity from Niagara Falls. McKinley died on September 16. Czolgosz was quickly found guilty and was executed by electrocution October 29, 1901. Wikipedia entries for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Czolgosz Czolgosz], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McKinley McKinley], and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_Exposition Pan-American Exposition].

'''the Paris Commune''' 
The "socialist government that briefly ruled Paris from 18 March (more formally from 26 March) to 28 May 1871," cited from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_commune Wikipedia].

==Page 373==

'''a single point . . . upon the next''' 
That is, a place that is beyond time, where the movement of the meridians (lines of longitude) have no effect. The only part of the earth where this is literally true is the axis. See, therefore, the Chums' journey through the Telluric Interior," pp. 114-18.

'''''Despedida''''' 
Goodbye (Spanish).

'''beignets''' 
New Orleans-style square, holeless doughnuts usually sprinkled with powdered sugar, famously served at Cafe Du Monde. [http://www.cafedumonde.com/ Website].

'''Bakunin''' 
Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Russian anarchist and revolutionary. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakunin Wikipedia entry].

'''Kropotkin''' 
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Russian prince and anarchist, author of ''Mutual Aid.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin Wikipedia entry].

'''Eusebio Gómez''' 
Wolfe Tone takes a historic name. In 1815 Eusebio Gómez received a royal land grant that included now-prosperous Jupiter Island, Florida. The land was later subdivided and, around 1900, a British development company acquired it.

'''''a sus órdenes''''' 
Sp., "at your service."

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 336-357

2008-09-06T19:26:01Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 356 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 336==

'''R-girls''' 
Rail girls?

Makes me think of b-girls, or bar girls [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=B-girls]. Seems appropriate, given the context, to imagine r-girls are the rails' equivalent.

'''White City''' 
The neighbourhood of extravagant buildings made for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. (First mentioned on [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25#Page_3 page 3]).

'''Jackson Park''' 
The site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Park_%28Chicago%29 Wikipedia]

'''"hoping for some glimpse of her White City, but saw only the darkened daytime one"''' 
"The White City... impressed everyone who saw it (at least before air pollution began to darken the façades) that plans were considered to refinish the [alabaster] exteriors in marble or some other material. These plans had to be abandoned in July 1894 when much of the fair grounds was destroyed in a fire. The fire occurred at the height of the Pullman Strike; since the strikers set other fires that very week, it is possible the fire was set by disgruntled Pullman employees." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exposition_of_1893 Wikipedia]

Pynchon has mentioned the decay of the White City earlier in the novel.

==Page 337==

'''Mrs. Dragsaw''' 
??? Speculation: dragsaw [http://www.webshots.com/explains/home-and-garden/dragsaw-case.html (pic)] is a real word [http://www.answers.com/topic/dragsaw (definition)] and certainly a funny name, especially for a woman hiring waitresses in a restaurant that serves lunch. Pynchon has a penchant for funny, if not outrageous, names.

'''Chillicothe''' 
City in Ross County, Ohio. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillicothe,_Ohio wiki]

==Page 338==

'''grubstake''' 
funds or supplies advanced to a mining prospector (or a person starting a business) in return for a promised share of the profits.

'''Maude Adams''' 
American actress, 1872-1953. First to play Peter Pan on the American stage (1905). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Adams Wikipedia article.] '''Not to be confused with Bond Girl Maud Adams!'''

'''Mock Duck's boys''' 
In the era of soysage, sunburgers and seitan, Mock Duck has just about dropped from public consciousness. A gluten-based vegetarian substance with at least an imagined resemblance to roast duck. Oriental grocers sometimes still carry it.

Actually, Mock Duck was a Tong leader in New York City, most active 1900
through 1912. Sai Wing Mock, aka "Mock Duck" was renowned for his eccentric
combat style; while hatchets, clubs and knives were standard weapons in
street-gang warfare, Mock Duck's method was to sow chaos and fear by crouching
in the center of the street, putting his head down, drawing two .44s and firing
wildly in all directions. (He was reportedly a terrible shot.)
(While Pynchon does add a lot of goofy names and implausible characters to his
fictions, it's the inclusions of the real ones that hold the history
together.)[[User:Infanttyrone|Infanttyrone]] 16:10, 11 December 2007 (PST)

==Page 339==

'''''en deshabille''''' 
partly dressed in a loose manner.

:more precisely, in this case, the French word for what Americans call a "négligée" (strange to translate a French word with another French word!). Very light indoor garment that one would never wear outside the house. "En déshabillé" literally means "in a déshabillé" or "wearing a déshabillé".

'''Modestine''' 
A 19th century first name. Perhaps a pun on the fact that she has not been modest.

'''let's say a ''short vacation''''' 
Maternity leave.

'''Hop Fung''' 
Not sure, but "wing hop fung" supposedly means "together forever prosper" [http://www.winghopfung.com/about.html]. Anyone?

: Wing=Forever, Hop=Together, Fung=Prosper

'''Celestial''' 
Chinese. "Celestial Empire" is a translation of one of the native names for China.

'''lobbygow''' 
"A hanger-on, go-between, or message runner, particularly one involved in the drug traffic—the speculation being that such persons usually hang about in lobbies" [http://mouthfulsfood.com/forums//lofiversion/index.php/t15.html cite]

'''"Chop Suey stories!"''' 
The Chinese in America making an industry out of fulfilling the natives' fantasies. Both the white-slavery dramatizations ("comediettas") and the dish chop suey itself are inauthentic but expected by Anglo tourists.

'''On Leong''' 
One of the many Chinese-American societies originally created for mutual support and protection (a ''tong'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tong_%28organization%29]) that became a criminal organization. The On Leong were influential in many major American cities around the turn of the century.

Also known as the On Leong Laborer and Merchant Association [http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/Chinese_Criminal_Enterprises.html]

==Page 340==

'''Hip Sing''' 
Like the On Leong, an influential Chinese-American criminal organization [http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/Chinese_Criminal_Enterprises.html].

Perhaps also a "hip" parody of the cook in ''Bonanza'', Hop Sing.

'''Bloody Angle''' 
Site of 20 hours of sustained combat at the Battle of Spotsylvania, 1864, thought possibly the most severe sustaned engagement of the American Civil War [http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/ABPP/BATTLES/va048.htm].

'''Word had gotten around''' 
Dahlia's experiences on Broadway play out like a perverse parody of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. Like Dahlia, Dreiser's heroine is a small town girl who makes the transition from bit-part player to star. Furthermore, Dahlia arrives in New York City in 1900, the same year that Sister Carrie was published.

'''morning-hat''' 
Not sure if it refers to a specific hat or a family of hats, but It was used in the title of a fashion article published in the New York Times on Feb. 23rd, 1908 [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F0CE3D81F3EE233A25750C2A9649C946997D6CF].
Most likely a casual girl hat, opposed to evening wear.

==Page 341==

'''highbinders''' 
Members of a Chinese-American criminal gang. (The word later came to apply to corrupt politicians.)

'''day club''' 
??? Speculation: what Pynchon is humorously calling a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nightstick nightstick] used in the daytime.

'''''Glans penis'''''-'''shaped helmets''' 
[[Image:glans-penis-shaped-helmet.jpg|thumb|''Glans penis''-shaped police helmet|right]] The odd, short-brimmed helmets worn by police officers in New York around the turn of the century and still worn by English police today [http://policehelmets.homestead.com/].

'''Mock Duck...firing two revolvers at a time in all directions''' 
Incredibly, Pynchon seems to be referencing the Hong Kong films of John Woo. The image of the Chinese gangster firing two guns simultaneously is a Woo trademark, first popularized in the 1986 film ''A Better Tomorrow'' and repeated in subsequent Woo films such as ''The Killer'' (1989) and ''Hard-Boiled'' (1992). The image was so closely associated with Woo's favorite leading man, Chow Yun-Fat, that it was even reprised for Chow's subsequent films in Hollywood.
According to Woo, the image of the outlaw firing two guns simultaneously was inspired by the final scene of ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid''. This is interesting in light of the Butch Cassidy references in the Telluride section of ATD. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woo#Trivia [wikipedia]]

There is an actual Tong leader being referenced here; Mock Duck was known for his two-gun style, but his methods were much different than Chow Yun-Fat's. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_Duck Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 342==

'''Tin Pan Alley''' 
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley Wikipedia]

'''acid magenta''' 
Acid dye is a member of a class of dye that is applied from an acidic solution. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_dye]

'''Con McVeety''' 
Investigation of the origins of family names on the North American continent has revealed that early immigrants bearing the name Veety or a variant (Veety has been written as MacVittie, MacVittye, MacVittae, MacWittie, MacWitty and many more) include: Alan MacWittie who settled in New England in 1685; Duncan McVittie arrived in Philadelphia Pa. in 1775. [http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/veety-family-crest.htm]

'''worst acts''' 
Itself a cliche, ''e.g'', Woody Allen's ''Broadway Danny Rose.''

==Page 343==

'''..seven-fifty a week..silent discussion.. "Ten?" and the deal was done.''' 
Curious deal here inluding the oxymoron but surely not cents nor dollars. 
Ten dollars in 1900 has the purchasing power in 2005 of
: $239.93 using the Consumer Price Index
: $205.36 using the GDP deflator

'''dime museum''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_museum Wikipedia]

'''absquatulate ''' 
to leave quickly or in a hurry. The phrase "in some haste to absquatulate' seems a bit redundant.

Found this interesting piece of knowledge on Freedictionary.com [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/] which explains the origins of a lot of the words used in AtD:
"In the 19th century, the vibrant energy of American English appeared in the use of Latin affixes to create jocular pseudo-Latin "learned" words. (...) Absquatulate has a prefix ab-, "away from," and a suffix -ate, "to act upon in a specified manner," affixed to a nonexistent base form -squatul-, probably suggested by squat. Hence the whimsical absquatulate, "to squat away from."

'''Olio''' 
A random collection (very roughly equivalent to the Spanish word ''zarzuela''). In music halls and variety theater an olio, here an act or acts unrelated to the "real" show, would go up in front of the curtain during long scene changes.

'''australian cockroach''' 
It is very unlikely that it was an Australian Cockroach (Periplaneta australasiae), which has a length of 3.0cm - 3.5cm (approx 1 1/4"-1 3/8"). Most likely refers to another (unwinged) species, called the Rhinoceros Cockroach or Giant Burrowing Cockroach (Macropanesthia rhinoceros) which is indigenous to Australia and can weigh up to 35 g (1.2 oz) and measure up to 3.15 in (80 mm) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_cockroach] Still a far cry from "the size of a sewer rat".

'''Bogoslaw Borowicz''' 
Borowicz is a polish name, patronymic from a pet form of Borowy, or from Borzyslaw, Bolebor, or some other personal name formed with the element bor ‘to fight’.

Found a reference to a Bogoslaw Borowicz in a scientific paper entitled "During Latency, Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 DNA Is Associated
with Nucleosomes in a Chromatin Structure" (!), published in 1989 in The Journal of Virology. [http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/reprint/63/2/943.pdf]

'''Floor show''' 
A Floorshow is a series of acts at a night club. That anyone could take this literally as "a display of floors" is both hilarious and very Pynchonian.

==Page 344==

'''strange tilings...mathematical issues''' 
This passage alludes to aperiodic tilings [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperiodic_tiling Wikipedia] such as the one discovered by Roger Penrose [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling Wikipedia]. See "The wallpaper in particular presented not a repeating pattern at all" [[ATD_171-198#Page_182|in annotations to p. 182.]]

'''Dr. Ictibus''' 
The Latin word ''ictus'' is from the past participle of īcere, to stike, blow, stab, wound; it can also refer to the wound itself. ''Ictibus'', is the ablative plural case for ''ictus'', thus we have Dr. Took-away-the-wounds.

'''Safe-Deflector Hat''' 
Dave Garroway supposedly had a hat that calculated the angle to be safe from falling bricks, if I recall correctly. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Garroway Wikipedia]

'''Odo''' 
Something to do with [http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/sainto26.htm Saint Odo], patron saint of rain?

Perhaps a reference to ''Star Trek'': Odo was the shape-shifting security officer of the space station ''Deep Space 9''. [http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Odo Star Trek Wiki]

Or to the anarchist Odo in Ursula LeGuin's novel ''The Dispossessed.''

In any case, Odo's onstage speech reflects the Mad Scientist's lab assistant in dozens of horror movies.

'''''figurante''''' 
a dancer; a ballet girl.
:also the (feminized) French term for "extra"

'''a coon revue''' 
Musical entertainment with African-American performers—or just as likely white performers in blackface—doing skits and singing songs that perpetuated a range of stereotypes: step-dancing, exaggerated dialect, lax morals, etc. Coon material was extremely popular in New York and elsewhere in the Jim Crow era (and it hasn't disappeared yet). For a partial list of coon references in ''AtD,'' [[ATD_26-56#Page_48|see annotation to p. 48.]]

'''Williams and Walker''' 
Bert Williams and George Walker, well-known vaudevillians who sometimes billed themselves as "The Two Real Coons." Williams was first to cross the color line as a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies. [http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/Harlem/text/williams_walker.html Here] is a good account of their careers.

'''Calpurnia... Mrs. Caesar''' 
Calpurnia was the wife of Julius Caesar and is a minor character in Shakespeare's play. She's a model of rectitude and courage, not someone who would like the subordinating title 'Mrs' which is thus a joke.

==Page 345==

'''Liu Bing''' 
One of three approaches to exegesis are possible here. 
:1) The name is a Chinese pun on English sounds and meanings. 
:2) The name is a reference to someone with this name. 
:3) The name is a reference to Chinese meanings in a Chinese or English pun. 
An example of the first approach: 
:Lubing? Like Lew Basnight as Lube-ass night [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_26-56#Page_36 see notes for page 36]. 

Two examples from the second approach: 
:Here, it is a woman, but in history Liu Bing was 
:1) The birth name of Emperor Chong of the Han Dynasty (143-145) who became emperor at the age of 1, and died a year later. 
:2) A high-ranking official of the Song Dynasty, (lived 433-477). 

Third approach: mix and match meanings for "Liu" and Bing". 

Liu can mean:
:lovely; beautiful; tassel; pomegranate; to flow; to spread; to circulate; to move clear; deep (of water); swift; precious stone; leave (message); to retain; to stay; to remain; to keep; to preserve; tumor; sulfur; bessemerizing of matte; lutetium; pure gold; sewing of wind; bay horse with black mane; large horned-owl; willow; skein; tuft; lock; creel; fish basket; the number 6; a clod of earth; land; the sound of the wind; to soar; to stroll; walk a horse; to stroll; to linger; dripping of rain from eaves, reheat by steaming

Bing can mean:
:soldiers; a force; an army; weapons; arms; military; war-like; ice; arrow-quiver; Trachycarpus excelsa; '''arecas'''; the third of the ten heavenly stems; the third position; third; number three; get rid of; put aside; reject; keep control; hold back; sad; mournful; bright; glorious; authority; handle; hilt; bright; brilliant; luminous(surname); to grasp; hold; maintain natural property or endowment; report to (a superior)bright ; shining, splendid(surname); ancient city name; happy; plate; scabbard; round flat cake; cookie; cake; pastry; furthermore; (not) at all; simultaneously; also; together with; to combine; to join; to merge amalgamate; combine; nightmare; start to sleep; ailment; sickness; illness; disease; fall ill; sick; defect.

So, Liu Bing might mean '''"lovely arecas,"''' "six cookies," "gold handle," "six soldiers" etc.

'''''Courage,'' Camille''' 
''Coo-RAZH,'' of course. The play ''Camille'' was adapted from ''The Lady of the Camellias'' (''La dame aux camélias,'' 1848) by Alexandre Dumas the Younger. In all French versions the character's name is Marguerite, so this gag only works in English-speaking countries.

'''Lillian Russell''' 
American actress and singer (1860-1922) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Russell Wikipedia entry]. Yes, she generally did wear a hat in her photos.

'''Verbena''' 
Continuing Pynchon's running joke of naming AtD's women after flowering herbs.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbena Wikipedia]

'''I.J. & K. Smokefoot''' 
Speculation: Smokefoot is the name of a song written by Bobby Keys, Jim Gordon, and Jim Price. It appears on the 1972 album "Bobby Keys." [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfixqw5ldae~T1 Bobby Keys] was a very much in demand session sax player, appearing on many well-known albums, including the Stones' "Sticky Fingers" where he plays an extended solo on "Can't You Hear Me Knockin." While this is not at all related to what's going on in AtD at the moment, it is a way that Pynchon comes up with names and Pynchon surely knows who Bobby Keys is.

:''Along with speculation,'' the name Smokefoot has some nonmusical grounding. There's a fairly numerous and widespread American clan named Rauchfuss. Their surname, obviously, is German—like those of some nonfictional department store magnates (Gimbel, Bergdorf, Saks). If the first immigrant Rauchfuss had translated his name into English it would have come out Smokefoot. Although a moderately large Google search does not turn up a Rauchfuss or Smokefoot in the business, it is '''not''' irrelevant that one form of this name is current in the population.

Quaternions based on 'i * j * k'.
:Not too sure about this connection: the choice of ''i'', ''j'', and ''k'' in the definition of quaternary space is arbitrary, as are ''x'', ''y'', and ''z'' in more conventional definitions of three-dimensional space. Could just be that Pynchon just wrote a little three letter sequence in alphabetical order. Is there anything in the text that would support the connection between the department store and quaternions?
::Well, ''x, y'' and ''z'' are just as arbitrary—but when you see the sequence you think "coordinates, 3-space, vectors." So ''i j k'' in the book's context does suggest a link to quaternion notation. This merits a closer look.

'''Ladies' Mile''' 
Broadway from 9th to 23rd Streets, Gilded Age location of all the most fashionable shops [http://www.preserve2.org/ladiesmile/]

==Page 346==

'''sussurant''' 
Whispering, making a low continuous indistinct sound [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=susurrant].

'''Jachin and Boaz''' 
The two pillars on the porch of Solomon's Temple. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaz_and_Jachin Wikipedia entry]. They also appear on the Tarot card of The High Priestess in the A.E. Waite Rider deck, whose designer, Pamela Colman Smith, is mentioned in ''ATD'' at p. 186. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Priestess Wikipedia entry].

'''just a kid''' 
Dally was born c1889, so 14 or 15?

'''newly introduced''' 
Paris 1900? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator Wikipedia]

==Page 347==

'''Yosemite Falls''' 
For pictures see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Falls Wikipedia].

'''"Her Mother Never Told Her"''' 
"Her mother never told her the things a young girl should know. 
About the ways of college men, and how they come and go, (mostly....go). 
Now age has taken her beauty, and sin has left its sad scar; 
So remember your mothers and sisters, boys, and let her sleep under the bar" [http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=2332 Lyrics]

'''the Tombs''' 
NYC prison.

==Page 348==

'''Saturday night in Kipperville''' 
Most likely a reference to the story ''Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel'' by Virginia Lee Burton, wherein Mike and promises to dig the cellar for Popperville's new town hall in one day using his steam shovel Mary Anne. The citizens from Kipperville and other nearby towns all come to watch. [[Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel|Read the Amazon description]].

'''arecas''' 
Areca is a genus of about 50 species of single-stemmed palms in the family Arecaceae, found in humid tropical forests from Malaysia to the Solomon Islands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areca wikipedia]

'''demimondaine''' 
A [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/demimondaine woman] belonging to the [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/demimonde demimonde]; a woman whose sexual promiscuity places her outside respectable society.

'''Perrier Jouet''' 
Brand of expensive Champagne.

'''ticker-tape machines''' 
Before the crawl at the bottom of the screen, you could get a Dow-Jones ticker installed in your home or office to bring you the latest from the market. Other ticker services delivered news, sports scores, etc., all printed out on a narrow paper tape. On days of special celebration, New York City allowed people to throw ticker tape from buildings—which on any other day would be a misdemeanor—hence the fossil expression "ticker-tape parade."

==Page 349==

'''Oomie Vamplet''' 
??? Pure speculation: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=oomie oomie]. Vamplet has a [http://onlinedictionary.datasegment.com/word/vamplet definition], but also sounds like a vamp (a woman who uses her sex appeal to entrap and exploit men) who is small. Also, to vamp in music is to improvise simple accompaniment or variation of a tune.

'''Kate Chase Sprague''' 
Kate Chase Sprague was the daughter of Civil War era cabinet member Salmon P. Chase and wife of Rhode Island Governor William Sprague. She was accused of having had an affair with New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Chase wikipedia]

'''Congo violet''' 
evidently a real color: Violet dyes: trisulphon violet 2B, Congo violet;
from a patent application, # 4025164. www.patentsonline. A quite dark violet, I think, is implied...lots of associations to Congo.

'''"Funiculi, Funicula"''' 
A very popular Neapolitan song composed in 1880 by Italian composer Luigi Denza (cf p.353) to commemorate the opening of the first '''funicular''' (inclined railway) on Mount Vesuvius. The song's huge success made the Neapolitan songs spreading all over the world. In the '50s Mario Lanza made this song popular in the US but with slightly changed English lyrics. For the lyrics in its original Neapolitan dialect and English see [http://www.vesuvioinrete.it/funicolare/e_funicolare_funiculi.htm].

At least three times in ''AtD'' we have an instrumental tag to identify the nationality of a person entering the scene. Here it's the Italian one (never mind that Zombini's family comes from northern Italy, not Naples); there's also a four-note plinka-plinka to announce a Chinese person (on page ???) and an alphorn solo to cue a Swiss person (page ???).

==Page 350==

'''Chinchito''' 
"Little Bug." (Wasn't Herve Villachaise supposed to be well endowed?)

'''in the wallpaper''' 
Cf Lew on cyclomite.

'''Mickey Finn''' 
Mickey Finn in the punch is a drug-laced (clasically chloral hydrate) knockout drink. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Finn_%28drugs%29 Wikipedia].

==Page 351==

'''Sweet Caporal''' 
A [http://www.adclassix.com/ads/55sweetcaporal.htm brand] of cigarette.

'''came for me''' 
On page 69 Erlys left this note: "I'll be back for her when I can."

'''"French flat"''' 
A category then used for buildings that fell between single-family dwellings and boardinghouses - see [http://www.arch.columbia.edu/hp/studio/2005-2006/resources/resources_primary1.html here]

'''Pitti Palace''' 
The Palazzo Pitti is a vast mainly Renaissance palace in Florence. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Pitti Wikipedia]

'''''grattacielo''''' 
Italian: skyscraper.

'''Bria''' 
Daughter of Erlys Mills and Luca Zombini.

==Page 352==

'''''Little Nemo''''' 
A full-page color cartoon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo_in_Slumberland Wikipedia] by Winsor McCay, started on October 15, 1905. Published in the New York Herald until 1911.

'''melted icebox ice''' 
(How nasty would this have been?)

'''majolica''' 
Tin-glazed earthenware [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majolica wikipedia]

'''Fletcher's Castoria''' 
A patent medicine composed of senna, sodium bicarbonate, essence of wintergreen, taraxicum, sugar and water, used as a laxative. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoria Wikipedia entry].

'''three-cent pieces''' 
The U.S. minted three-cent coins until 1889.

'''''La Forza del Destino''''' 
Literally, the "force of destiny." An opera by Verdi [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Forza_del_Destino wikipedia]

'''''cretino''''' 
Cretin

==Page 353==

'''Luigi Denza''' 
Luigi Denza (2846-1922) was an Italian composer. In 1898, he moved to London and became a professor of singing at at the Royal Academy of Music.
Among the hundreds of songs he wrote, the most popular one was the Neapolitan song (1880) ''Funiculi, Funicula'' (cf 349). [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Denza Wikipedia].

'''Psyche knot''' 
The knot in which Psyche kept her hair, as shown in ads for White Rock mineral water during this time frame. [http://www.whiterocking.org/pcw.html Pictures here].

==Page 354==

'''''"bella"''''' 
sweetheart; beauty.

'''Friuli''' 
an area of northeastern Italy with its own particular cultural and historical identity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friuli Wikipedia]

'''donkey salami''' 
Italian sausage-makers do use donkey meat; look for ''salame d'asino'' or ''mortadella di asino.'' It is not imported into the U.S. 

From Robert Musil's ''The Man Without Qualitites'' p. 939 of the 1995 translation by S. Wilkins. Musil and his lead character Ulrich had both served in the Austro-Hungarian army.

:''Considering the window display of German intellect, Ulrich was reminded of an old army joke: "Mortadella." This had been the nickname of an unpopular general, after the popular Italian sausage, and if anyone wondered why, the answer was: "Part pig, part donkey."''

'''like Austria, with gestures''' 
:One of the finest news films ever shown on TV concerned a regional election in this part of Italy. The candidates spoke excellent German but used their arms and hands in a highly un-German way.

'''platinum black''' 
"a fine black powder of platinum; used as a catalyst in chemical reactions" [http://www.answers.com/topic/platinum-black cite]

Pynchon may also have had in mind a black hole or "Black Body Radiation," which was discovered around 1900. In physics a black body is an ideal body that absorbs without reflection all of the electromagnetic radiation (light is one of them) incident on its surface. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbody_radiation Wikipedia].

'''''affondato, vero?''''' 
Italian for "Sunk, isn't it?" as in the battleship game.

'''bloody horror shows''' 
A reference to the Grand Guignol theater in Paris, which opened in 1897, known for its gory shows. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_guignol Wikipedia entry].

==Page 355==

'''Doubles the image...''' 
Suggestive of quantum doubling, i.e. universe splitting in one version/solution of the Multiverse problem.

'''''capisci?''''' 
Italian: you understand?

'''Houdini''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini Wikipedia]

'''''Porca miseria''''' 
All-purpose Italian expletive, not too crude. Translates into English as damn!

'''Teatro Malibran''' 
The 900-seat theather was built in 1677 for drama, opera and classical concerts. It was originally named Teatro di San Giovanni Crisostomo and later changed to Teatro Malibran to honor Maria Malibran, a well-known soprano of the early 19th century. During its long history the theather has been refurbished and rennovated numerous times, most recently in 2001. It is a beautiful landmark theather. It's doubtful Teatro Malibran is a proper venue for magic shows. For the beautiful indoor and outdoor pictures [http://www.noehill.com/med/med2002/malibran.asp Teatro Malibran].

==Page 356==

'''''Stupendica''''' 
Example of Pynchon's marvelous ship names (e.g. ''USS Scaffold'' and ''Susannah Squaducci'' in ''V.''); perhaps a play on ''Titanic''.

'''Chinese Gong Effect''' 
???

'''East Rumelian''' 
East Rumelia was an autonomous Bulgarian province, fomerly an Ottoman dependency south of the Balkans. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 it was to be ruled by Turkey but with a Christian prince as part of a complex territorial power-balance agreeable to all Powers at the 1878 Congress of Berlin. Interestingly, an area in which the Glagolitic alphabet was propounded (see P.252).

==Page 357==

'''Bert Snidell''' 
Bert Snidell was first mentioned on page 75.

'''Hindoo shuffle''' 
Hindoo, or Hindu, shuffle is one of numerous ways of shuffling playing cards. For a description [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuffling_playing_cards#Hindu_shuffle Wikipedia].

'''French drop''' 
A well-known vanishing act of a small object involving sleight of hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drop Wikipedia].

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 336-357

2008-09-06T19:12:30Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 354 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 336==

'''R-girls''' 
Rail girls?

Makes me think of b-girls, or bar girls [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=B-girls]. Seems appropriate, given the context, to imagine r-girls are the rails' equivalent.

'''White City''' 
The neighbourhood of extravagant buildings made for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. (First mentioned on [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25#Page_3 page 3]).

'''Jackson Park''' 
The site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Park_%28Chicago%29 Wikipedia]

'''"hoping for some glimpse of her White City, but saw only the darkened daytime one"''' 
"The White City... impressed everyone who saw it (at least before air pollution began to darken the façades) that plans were considered to refinish the [alabaster] exteriors in marble or some other material. These plans had to be abandoned in July 1894 when much of the fair grounds was destroyed in a fire. The fire occurred at the height of the Pullman Strike; since the strikers set other fires that very week, it is possible the fire was set by disgruntled Pullman employees." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exposition_of_1893 Wikipedia]

Pynchon has mentioned the decay of the White City earlier in the novel.

==Page 337==

'''Mrs. Dragsaw''' 
??? Speculation: dragsaw [http://www.webshots.com/explains/home-and-garden/dragsaw-case.html (pic)] is a real word [http://www.answers.com/topic/dragsaw (definition)] and certainly a funny name, especially for a woman hiring waitresses in a restaurant that serves lunch. Pynchon has a penchant for funny, if not outrageous, names.

'''Chillicothe''' 
City in Ross County, Ohio. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillicothe,_Ohio wiki]

==Page 338==

'''grubstake''' 
funds or supplies advanced to a mining prospector (or a person starting a business) in return for a promised share of the profits.

'''Maude Adams''' 
American actress, 1872-1953. First to play Peter Pan on the American stage (1905). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Adams Wikipedia article.] '''Not to be confused with Bond Girl Maud Adams!'''

'''Mock Duck's boys''' 
In the era of soysage, sunburgers and seitan, Mock Duck has just about dropped from public consciousness. A gluten-based vegetarian substance with at least an imagined resemblance to roast duck. Oriental grocers sometimes still carry it.

Actually, Mock Duck was a Tong leader in New York City, most active 1900
through 1912. Sai Wing Mock, aka "Mock Duck" was renowned for his eccentric
combat style; while hatchets, clubs and knives were standard weapons in
street-gang warfare, Mock Duck's method was to sow chaos and fear by crouching
in the center of the street, putting his head down, drawing two .44s and firing
wildly in all directions. (He was reportedly a terrible shot.)
(While Pynchon does add a lot of goofy names and implausible characters to his
fictions, it's the inclusions of the real ones that hold the history
together.)[[User:Infanttyrone|Infanttyrone]] 16:10, 11 December 2007 (PST)

==Page 339==

'''''en deshabille''''' 
partly dressed in a loose manner.

:more precisely, in this case, the French word for what Americans call a "négligée" (strange to translate a French word with another French word!). Very light indoor garment that one would never wear outside the house. "En déshabillé" literally means "in a déshabillé" or "wearing a déshabillé".

'''Modestine''' 
A 19th century first name. Perhaps a pun on the fact that she has not been modest.

'''let's say a ''short vacation''''' 
Maternity leave.

'''Hop Fung''' 
Not sure, but "wing hop fung" supposedly means "together forever prosper" [http://www.winghopfung.com/about.html]. Anyone?

: Wing=Forever, Hop=Together, Fung=Prosper

'''Celestial''' 
Chinese. "Celestial Empire" is a translation of one of the native names for China.

'''lobbygow''' 
"A hanger-on, go-between, or message runner, particularly one involved in the drug traffic—the speculation being that such persons usually hang about in lobbies" [http://mouthfulsfood.com/forums//lofiversion/index.php/t15.html cite]

'''"Chop Suey stories!"''' 
The Chinese in America making an industry out of fulfilling the natives' fantasies. Both the white-slavery dramatizations ("comediettas") and the dish chop suey itself are inauthentic but expected by Anglo tourists.

'''On Leong''' 
One of the many Chinese-American societies originally created for mutual support and protection (a ''tong'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tong_%28organization%29]) that became a criminal organization. The On Leong were influential in many major American cities around the turn of the century.

Also known as the On Leong Laborer and Merchant Association [http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/Chinese_Criminal_Enterprises.html]

==Page 340==

'''Hip Sing''' 
Like the On Leong, an influential Chinese-American criminal organization [http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/Chinese_Criminal_Enterprises.html].

Perhaps also a "hip" parody of the cook in ''Bonanza'', Hop Sing.

'''Bloody Angle''' 
Site of 20 hours of sustained combat at the Battle of Spotsylvania, 1864, thought possibly the most severe sustaned engagement of the American Civil War [http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/ABPP/BATTLES/va048.htm].

'''Word had gotten around''' 
Dahlia's experiences on Broadway play out like a perverse parody of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. Like Dahlia, Dreiser's heroine is a small town girl who makes the transition from bit-part player to star. Furthermore, Dahlia arrives in New York City in 1900, the same year that Sister Carrie was published.

'''morning-hat''' 
Not sure if it refers to a specific hat or a family of hats, but It was used in the title of a fashion article published in the New York Times on Feb. 23rd, 1908 [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F0CE3D81F3EE233A25750C2A9649C946997D6CF].
Most likely a casual girl hat, opposed to evening wear.

==Page 341==

'''highbinders''' 
Members of a Chinese-American criminal gang. (The word later came to apply to corrupt politicians.)

'''day club''' 
??? Speculation: what Pynchon is humorously calling a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nightstick nightstick] used in the daytime.

'''''Glans penis'''''-'''shaped helmets''' 
[[Image:glans-penis-shaped-helmet.jpg|thumb|''Glans penis''-shaped police helmet|right]] The odd, short-brimmed helmets worn by police officers in New York around the turn of the century and still worn by English police today [http://policehelmets.homestead.com/].

'''Mock Duck...firing two revolvers at a time in all directions''' 
Incredibly, Pynchon seems to be referencing the Hong Kong films of John Woo. The image of the Chinese gangster firing two guns simultaneously is a Woo trademark, first popularized in the 1986 film ''A Better Tomorrow'' and repeated in subsequent Woo films such as ''The Killer'' (1989) and ''Hard-Boiled'' (1992). The image was so closely associated with Woo's favorite leading man, Chow Yun-Fat, that it was even reprised for Chow's subsequent films in Hollywood.
According to Woo, the image of the outlaw firing two guns simultaneously was inspired by the final scene of ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid''. This is interesting in light of the Butch Cassidy references in the Telluride section of ATD. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woo#Trivia [wikipedia]]

There is an actual Tong leader being referenced here; Mock Duck was known for his two-gun style, but his methods were much different than Chow Yun-Fat's. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_Duck Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 342==

'''Tin Pan Alley''' 
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley Wikipedia]

'''acid magenta''' 
Acid dye is a member of a class of dye that is applied from an acidic solution. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_dye]

'''Con McVeety''' 
Investigation of the origins of family names on the North American continent has revealed that early immigrants bearing the name Veety or a variant (Veety has been written as MacVittie, MacVittye, MacVittae, MacWittie, MacWitty and many more) include: Alan MacWittie who settled in New England in 1685; Duncan McVittie arrived in Philadelphia Pa. in 1775. [http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/veety-family-crest.htm]

'''worst acts''' 
Itself a cliche, ''e.g'', Woody Allen's ''Broadway Danny Rose.''

==Page 343==

'''..seven-fifty a week..silent discussion.. "Ten?" and the deal was done.''' 
Curious deal here inluding the oxymoron but surely not cents nor dollars. 
Ten dollars in 1900 has the purchasing power in 2005 of
: $239.93 using the Consumer Price Index
: $205.36 using the GDP deflator

'''dime museum''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_museum Wikipedia]

'''absquatulate ''' 
to leave quickly or in a hurry. The phrase "in some haste to absquatulate' seems a bit redundant.

Found this interesting piece of knowledge on Freedictionary.com [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/] which explains the origins of a lot of the words used in AtD:
"In the 19th century, the vibrant energy of American English appeared in the use of Latin affixes to create jocular pseudo-Latin "learned" words. (...) Absquatulate has a prefix ab-, "away from," and a suffix -ate, "to act upon in a specified manner," affixed to a nonexistent base form -squatul-, probably suggested by squat. Hence the whimsical absquatulate, "to squat away from."

'''Olio''' 
A random collection (very roughly equivalent to the Spanish word ''zarzuela''). In music halls and variety theater an olio, here an act or acts unrelated to the "real" show, would go up in front of the curtain during long scene changes.

'''australian cockroach''' 
It is very unlikely that it was an Australian Cockroach (Periplaneta australasiae), which has a length of 3.0cm - 3.5cm (approx 1 1/4"-1 3/8"). Most likely refers to another (unwinged) species, called the Rhinoceros Cockroach or Giant Burrowing Cockroach (Macropanesthia rhinoceros) which is indigenous to Australia and can weigh up to 35 g (1.2 oz) and measure up to 3.15 in (80 mm) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_cockroach] Still a far cry from "the size of a sewer rat".

'''Bogoslaw Borowicz''' 
Borowicz is a polish name, patronymic from a pet form of Borowy, or from Borzyslaw, Bolebor, or some other personal name formed with the element bor ‘to fight’.

Found a reference to a Bogoslaw Borowicz in a scientific paper entitled "During Latency, Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 DNA Is Associated
with Nucleosomes in a Chromatin Structure" (!), published in 1989 in The Journal of Virology. [http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/reprint/63/2/943.pdf]

'''Floor show''' 
A Floorshow is a series of acts at a night club. That anyone could take this literally as "a display of floors" is both hilarious and very Pynchonian.

==Page 344==

'''strange tilings...mathematical issues''' 
This passage alludes to aperiodic tilings [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperiodic_tiling Wikipedia] such as the one discovered by Roger Penrose [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling Wikipedia]. See "The wallpaper in particular presented not a repeating pattern at all" [[ATD_171-198#Page_182|in annotations to p. 182.]]

'''Dr. Ictibus''' 
The Latin word ''ictus'' is from the past participle of īcere, to stike, blow, stab, wound; it can also refer to the wound itself. ''Ictibus'', is the ablative plural case for ''ictus'', thus we have Dr. Took-away-the-wounds.

'''Safe-Deflector Hat''' 
Dave Garroway supposedly had a hat that calculated the angle to be safe from falling bricks, if I recall correctly. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Garroway Wikipedia]

'''Odo''' 
Something to do with [http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/sainto26.htm Saint Odo], patron saint of rain?

Perhaps a reference to ''Star Trek'': Odo was the shape-shifting security officer of the space station ''Deep Space 9''. [http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Odo Star Trek Wiki]

Or to the anarchist Odo in Ursula LeGuin's novel ''The Dispossessed.''

In any case, Odo's onstage speech reflects the Mad Scientist's lab assistant in dozens of horror movies.

'''''figurante''''' 
a dancer; a ballet girl.
:also the (feminized) French term for "extra"

'''a coon revue''' 
Musical entertainment with African-American performers—or just as likely white performers in blackface—doing skits and singing songs that perpetuated a range of stereotypes: step-dancing, exaggerated dialect, lax morals, etc. Coon material was extremely popular in New York and elsewhere in the Jim Crow era (and it hasn't disappeared yet). For a partial list of coon references in ''AtD,'' [[ATD_26-56#Page_48|see annotation to p. 48.]]

'''Williams and Walker''' 
Bert Williams and George Walker, well-known vaudevillians who sometimes billed themselves as "The Two Real Coons." Williams was first to cross the color line as a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies. [http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/Harlem/text/williams_walker.html Here] is a good account of their careers.

'''Calpurnia... Mrs. Caesar''' 
Calpurnia was the wife of Julius Caesar and is a minor character in Shakespeare's play. She's a model of rectitude and courage, not someone who would like the subordinating title 'Mrs' which is thus a joke.

==Page 345==

'''Liu Bing''' 
One of three approaches to exegesis are possible here. 
:1) The name is a Chinese pun on English sounds and meanings. 
:2) The name is a reference to someone with this name. 
:3) The name is a reference to Chinese meanings in a Chinese or English pun. 
An example of the first approach: 
:Lubing? Like Lew Basnight as Lube-ass night [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_26-56#Page_36 see notes for page 36]. 

Two examples from the second approach: 
:Here, it is a woman, but in history Liu Bing was 
:1) The birth name of Emperor Chong of the Han Dynasty (143-145) who became emperor at the age of 1, and died a year later. 
:2) A high-ranking official of the Song Dynasty, (lived 433-477). 

Third approach: mix and match meanings for "Liu" and Bing". 

Liu can mean:
:lovely; beautiful; tassel; pomegranate; to flow; to spread; to circulate; to move clear; deep (of water); swift; precious stone; leave (message); to retain; to stay; to remain; to keep; to preserve; tumor; sulfur; bessemerizing of matte; lutetium; pure gold; sewing of wind; bay horse with black mane; large horned-owl; willow; skein; tuft; lock; creel; fish basket; the number 6; a clod of earth; land; the sound of the wind; to soar; to stroll; walk a horse; to stroll; to linger; dripping of rain from eaves, reheat by steaming

Bing can mean:
:soldiers; a force; an army; weapons; arms; military; war-like; ice; arrow-quiver; Trachycarpus excelsa; '''arecas'''; the third of the ten heavenly stems; the third position; third; number three; get rid of; put aside; reject; keep control; hold back; sad; mournful; bright; glorious; authority; handle; hilt; bright; brilliant; luminous(surname); to grasp; hold; maintain natural property or endowment; report to (a superior)bright ; shining, splendid(surname); ancient city name; happy; plate; scabbard; round flat cake; cookie; cake; pastry; furthermore; (not) at all; simultaneously; also; together with; to combine; to join; to merge amalgamate; combine; nightmare; start to sleep; ailment; sickness; illness; disease; fall ill; sick; defect.

So, Liu Bing might mean '''"lovely arecas,"''' "six cookies," "gold handle," "six soldiers" etc.

'''''Courage,'' Camille''' 
''Coo-RAZH,'' of course. The play ''Camille'' was adapted from ''The Lady of the Camellias'' (''La dame aux camélias,'' 1848) by Alexandre Dumas the Younger. In all French versions the character's name is Marguerite, so this gag only works in English-speaking countries.

'''Lillian Russell''' 
American actress and singer (1860-1922) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Russell Wikipedia entry]. Yes, she generally did wear a hat in her photos.

'''Verbena''' 
Continuing Pynchon's running joke of naming AtD's women after flowering herbs.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbena Wikipedia]

'''I.J. & K. Smokefoot''' 
Speculation: Smokefoot is the name of a song written by Bobby Keys, Jim Gordon, and Jim Price. It appears on the 1972 album "Bobby Keys." [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfixqw5ldae~T1 Bobby Keys] was a very much in demand session sax player, appearing on many well-known albums, including the Stones' "Sticky Fingers" where he plays an extended solo on "Can't You Hear Me Knockin." While this is not at all related to what's going on in AtD at the moment, it is a way that Pynchon comes up with names and Pynchon surely knows who Bobby Keys is.

:''Along with speculation,'' the name Smokefoot has some nonmusical grounding. There's a fairly numerous and widespread American clan named Rauchfuss. Their surname, obviously, is German—like those of some nonfictional department store magnates (Gimbel, Bergdorf, Saks). If the first immigrant Rauchfuss had translated his name into English it would have come out Smokefoot. Although a moderately large Google search does not turn up a Rauchfuss or Smokefoot in the business, it is '''not''' irrelevant that one form of this name is current in the population.

Quaternions based on 'i * j * k'.
:Not too sure about this connection: the choice of ''i'', ''j'', and ''k'' in the definition of quaternary space is arbitrary, as are ''x'', ''y'', and ''z'' in more conventional definitions of three-dimensional space. Could just be that Pynchon just wrote a little three letter sequence in alphabetical order. Is there anything in the text that would support the connection between the department store and quaternions?
::Well, ''x, y'' and ''z'' are just as arbitrary—but when you see the sequence you think "coordinates, 3-space, vectors." So ''i j k'' in the book's context does suggest a link to quaternion notation. This merits a closer look.

'''Ladies' Mile''' 
Broadway from 9th to 23rd Streets, Gilded Age location of all the most fashionable shops [http://www.preserve2.org/ladiesmile/]

==Page 346==

'''sussurant''' 
Whispering, making a low continuous indistinct sound [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=susurrant].

'''Jachin and Boaz''' 
The two pillars on the porch of Solomon's Temple. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaz_and_Jachin Wikipedia entry]. They also appear on the Tarot card of The High Priestess in the A.E. Waite Rider deck, whose designer, Pamela Colman Smith, is mentioned in ''ATD'' at p. 186. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Priestess Wikipedia entry].

'''just a kid''' 
Dally was born c1889, so 14 or 15?

'''newly introduced''' 
Paris 1900? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator Wikipedia]

==Page 347==

'''Yosemite Falls''' 
For pictures see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Falls Wikipedia].

'''"Her Mother Never Told Her"''' 
"Her mother never told her the things a young girl should know. 
About the ways of college men, and how they come and go, (mostly....go). 
Now age has taken her beauty, and sin has left its sad scar; 
So remember your mothers and sisters, boys, and let her sleep under the bar" [http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=2332 Lyrics]

'''the Tombs''' 
NYC prison.

==Page 348==

'''Saturday night in Kipperville''' 
Most likely a reference to the story ''Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel'' by Virginia Lee Burton, wherein Mike and promises to dig the cellar for Popperville's new town hall in one day using his steam shovel Mary Anne. The citizens from Kipperville and other nearby towns all come to watch. [[Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel|Read the Amazon description]].

'''arecas''' 
Areca is a genus of about 50 species of single-stemmed palms in the family Arecaceae, found in humid tropical forests from Malaysia to the Solomon Islands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areca wikipedia]

'''demimondaine''' 
A [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/demimondaine woman] belonging to the [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/demimonde demimonde]; a woman whose sexual promiscuity places her outside respectable society.

'''Perrier Jouet''' 
Brand of expensive Champagne.

'''ticker-tape machines''' 
Before the crawl at the bottom of the screen, you could get a Dow-Jones ticker installed in your home or office to bring you the latest from the market. Other ticker services delivered news, sports scores, etc., all printed out on a narrow paper tape. On days of special celebration, New York City allowed people to throw ticker tape from buildings—which on any other day would be a misdemeanor—hence the fossil expression "ticker-tape parade."

==Page 349==

'''Oomie Vamplet''' 
??? Pure speculation: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=oomie oomie]. Vamplet has a [http://onlinedictionary.datasegment.com/word/vamplet definition], but also sounds like a vamp (a woman who uses her sex appeal to entrap and exploit men) who is small. Also, to vamp in music is to improvise simple accompaniment or variation of a tune.

'''Kate Chase Sprague''' 
Kate Chase Sprague was the daughter of Civil War era cabinet member Salmon P. Chase and wife of Rhode Island Governor William Sprague. She was accused of having had an affair with New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Chase wikipedia]

'''Congo violet''' 
evidently a real color: Violet dyes: trisulphon violet 2B, Congo violet;
from a patent application, # 4025164. www.patentsonline. A quite dark violet, I think, is implied...lots of associations to Congo.

'''"Funiculi, Funicula"''' 
A very popular Neapolitan song composed in 1880 by Italian composer Luigi Denza (cf p.353) to commemorate the opening of the first '''funicular''' (inclined railway) on Mount Vesuvius. The song's huge success made the Neapolitan songs spreading all over the world. In the '50s Mario Lanza made this song popular in the US but with slightly changed English lyrics. For the lyrics in its original Neapolitan dialect and English see [http://www.vesuvioinrete.it/funicolare/e_funicolare_funiculi.htm].

At least three times in ''AtD'' we have an instrumental tag to identify the nationality of a person entering the scene. Here it's the Italian one (never mind that Zombini's family comes from northern Italy, not Naples); there's also a four-note plinka-plinka to announce a Chinese person (on page ???) and an alphorn solo to cue a Swiss person (page ???).

==Page 350==

'''Chinchito''' 
"Little Bug." (Wasn't Herve Villachaise supposed to be well endowed?)

'''in the wallpaper''' 
Cf Lew on cyclomite.

'''Mickey Finn''' 
Mickey Finn in the punch is a drug-laced (clasically chloral hydrate) knockout drink. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Finn_%28drugs%29 Wikipedia].

==Page 351==

'''Sweet Caporal''' 
A [http://www.adclassix.com/ads/55sweetcaporal.htm brand] of cigarette.

'''came for me''' 
On page 69 Erlys left this note: "I'll be back for her when I can."

'''"French flat"''' 
A category then used for buildings that fell between single-family dwellings and boardinghouses - see [http://www.arch.columbia.edu/hp/studio/2005-2006/resources/resources_primary1.html here]

'''Pitti Palace''' 
The Palazzo Pitti is a vast mainly Renaissance palace in Florence. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Pitti Wikipedia]

'''''grattacielo''''' 
Italian: skyscraper.

'''Bria''' 
Daughter of Erlys Mills and Luca Zombini.

==Page 352==

'''''Little Nemo''''' 
A full-page color cartoon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo_in_Slumberland Wikipedia] by Winsor McCay, started on October 15, 1905. Published in the New York Herald until 1911.

'''melted icebox ice''' 
(How nasty would this have been?)

'''majolica''' 
Tin-glazed earthenware [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majolica wikipedia]

'''Fletcher's Castoria''' 
A patent medicine composed of senna, sodium bicarbonate, essence of wintergreen, taraxicum, sugar and water, used as a laxative. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoria Wikipedia entry].

'''three-cent pieces''' 
The U.S. minted three-cent coins until 1889.

'''''La Forza del Destino''''' 
Literally, the "force of destiny." An opera by Verdi [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Forza_del_Destino wikipedia]

'''''cretino''''' 
Cretin

==Page 353==

'''Luigi Denza''' 
Luigi Denza (2846-1922) was an Italian composer. In 1898, he moved to London and became a professor of singing at at the Royal Academy of Music.
Among the hundreds of songs he wrote, the most popular one was the Neapolitan song (1880) ''Funiculi, Funicula'' (cf 349). [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Denza Wikipedia].

'''Psyche knot''' 
The knot in which Psyche kept her hair, as shown in ads for White Rock mineral water during this time frame. [http://www.whiterocking.org/pcw.html Pictures here].

==Page 354==

'''''"bella"''''' 
sweetheart; beauty.

'''Friuli''' 
an area of northeastern Italy with its own particular cultural and historical identity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friuli Wikipedia]

'''donkey salami''' 
Italian sausage-makers do use donkey meat; look for ''salame d'asino'' or ''mortadella di asino.'' It is not imported into the U.S. 

From Robert Musil's ''The Man Without Qualitites'' p. 939 of the 1995 translation by S. Wilkins. Musil and his lead character Ulrich had both served in the Austro-Hungarian army.

:''Considering the window display of German intellect, Ulrich was reminded of an old army joke: "Mortadella." This had been the nickname of an unpopular general, after the popular Italian sausage, and if anyone wondered why, the answer was: "Part pig, part donkey."''

'''like Austria, with gestures''' 
:One of the finest news films ever shown on TV concerned a regional election in this part of Italy. The candidates spoke excellent German but used their arms and hands in a highly un-German way.

'''platinum black''' 
"a fine black powder of platinum; used as a catalyst in chemical reactions" [http://www.answers.com/topic/platinum-black cite]

Pynchon may also have had in mind a black hole or "Black Body Radiation," which was discovered around 1900. In physics a black body is an ideal body that absorbs without reflection all of the electromagnetic radiation (light is one of them) incident on its surface. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbody_radiation Wikipedia].

'''''affondato, vero?''''' 
Italian for "Sunk, isn't it?" as in the battleship game.

'''bloody horror shows''' 
A reference to the Grand Guignol theater in Paris, which opened in 1897, known for its gory shows. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_guignol Wikipedia entry].

==Page 355==

'''Doubles the image...''' 
Suggestive of quantum doubling, i.e. universe splitting in one version/solution of the Multiverse problem.

'''''capisci?''''' 
Italian: you understand?

'''Houdini''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini Wikipedia]

'''''Porca miseria''''' 
All-purpose Italian expletive, not too crude. Translates into English as damn!

'''Teatro Malibran''' 
The 900-seat theather was built in 1677 for drama, opera and classical concerts. It was originally named Teatro di San Giovanni Crisostomo and later changed to Teatro Malibran to honor Maria Malibran, a well-known soprano of the early 19th century. During its long history the theather has been refurbished and rennovated numerous times, most recently in 2001. It is a beautiful landmark theather. It's doubtful Teatro Malibran is a proper venue for magic shows. For the beautiful indoor and outdoor pictures [http://www.noehill.com/med/med2002/malibran.asp Teatro Malibran].

==Page 356==

'''''Stupendica''''' 
Example of Pynchon's marvelous ship names (e.g. ''USS Scaffold'' and ''Susannah Squaducci'' in ''V.''); perhaps a play on ''Titanic''.

'''Chinese Gong Effect''' 
???

'''East Rumelian''' 
East Rumelia was an autonomous Bulgarian province, fomerly an Ottoman dependency south of the Balkans. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 it was to be ruled by Turkey but with a Christian prince as part of a complex territorial power-balance agreeable to all Powers at the 1878 Congress of Berlin. Interestingly, an area in which the Glagolitic alphabet was propounded (see P.252).

'''Erlys remembered''' 
(Why not Dally?)

==Page 357==

'''Bert Snidell''' 
Bert Snidell was first mentioned on page 75.

'''Hindoo shuffle''' 
Hindoo, or Hindu, shuffle is one of numerous ways of shuffling playing cards. For a description [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuffling_playing_cards#Hindu_shuffle Wikipedia].

'''French drop''' 
A well-known vanishing act of a small object involving sleight of hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drop Wikipedia].

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 336-357

2008-09-06T18:59:30Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 351 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 336==

'''R-girls''' 
Rail girls?

Makes me think of b-girls, or bar girls [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=B-girls]. Seems appropriate, given the context, to imagine r-girls are the rails' equivalent.

'''White City''' 
The neighbourhood of extravagant buildings made for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. (First mentioned on [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25#Page_3 page 3]).

'''Jackson Park''' 
The site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Park_%28Chicago%29 Wikipedia]

'''"hoping for some glimpse of her White City, but saw only the darkened daytime one"''' 
"The White City... impressed everyone who saw it (at least before air pollution began to darken the façades) that plans were considered to refinish the [alabaster] exteriors in marble or some other material. These plans had to be abandoned in July 1894 when much of the fair grounds was destroyed in a fire. The fire occurred at the height of the Pullman Strike; since the strikers set other fires that very week, it is possible the fire was set by disgruntled Pullman employees." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exposition_of_1893 Wikipedia]

Pynchon has mentioned the decay of the White City earlier in the novel.

==Page 337==

'''Mrs. Dragsaw''' 
??? Speculation: dragsaw [http://www.webshots.com/explains/home-and-garden/dragsaw-case.html (pic)] is a real word [http://www.answers.com/topic/dragsaw (definition)] and certainly a funny name, especially for a woman hiring waitresses in a restaurant that serves lunch. Pynchon has a penchant for funny, if not outrageous, names.

'''Chillicothe''' 
City in Ross County, Ohio. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillicothe,_Ohio wiki]

==Page 338==

'''grubstake''' 
funds or supplies advanced to a mining prospector (or a person starting a business) in return for a promised share of the profits.

'''Maude Adams''' 
American actress, 1872-1953. First to play Peter Pan on the American stage (1905). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Adams Wikipedia article.] '''Not to be confused with Bond Girl Maud Adams!'''

'''Mock Duck's boys''' 
In the era of soysage, sunburgers and seitan, Mock Duck has just about dropped from public consciousness. A gluten-based vegetarian substance with at least an imagined resemblance to roast duck. Oriental grocers sometimes still carry it.

Actually, Mock Duck was a Tong leader in New York City, most active 1900
through 1912. Sai Wing Mock, aka "Mock Duck" was renowned for his eccentric
combat style; while hatchets, clubs and knives were standard weapons in
street-gang warfare, Mock Duck's method was to sow chaos and fear by crouching
in the center of the street, putting his head down, drawing two .44s and firing
wildly in all directions. (He was reportedly a terrible shot.)
(While Pynchon does add a lot of goofy names and implausible characters to his
fictions, it's the inclusions of the real ones that hold the history
together.)[[User:Infanttyrone|Infanttyrone]] 16:10, 11 December 2007 (PST)

==Page 339==

'''''en deshabille''''' 
partly dressed in a loose manner.

:more precisely, in this case, the French word for what Americans call a "négligée" (strange to translate a French word with another French word!). Very light indoor garment that one would never wear outside the house. "En déshabillé" literally means "in a déshabillé" or "wearing a déshabillé".

'''Modestine''' 
A 19th century first name. Perhaps a pun on the fact that she has not been modest.

'''let's say a ''short vacation''''' 
Maternity leave.

'''Hop Fung''' 
Not sure, but "wing hop fung" supposedly means "together forever prosper" [http://www.winghopfung.com/about.html]. Anyone?

: Wing=Forever, Hop=Together, Fung=Prosper

'''Celestial''' 
Chinese. "Celestial Empire" is a translation of one of the native names for China.

'''lobbygow''' 
"A hanger-on, go-between, or message runner, particularly one involved in the drug traffic—the speculation being that such persons usually hang about in lobbies" [http://mouthfulsfood.com/forums//lofiversion/index.php/t15.html cite]

'''"Chop Suey stories!"''' 
The Chinese in America making an industry out of fulfilling the natives' fantasies. Both the white-slavery dramatizations ("comediettas") and the dish chop suey itself are inauthentic but expected by Anglo tourists.

'''On Leong''' 
One of the many Chinese-American societies originally created for mutual support and protection (a ''tong'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tong_%28organization%29]) that became a criminal organization. The On Leong were influential in many major American cities around the turn of the century.

Also known as the On Leong Laborer and Merchant Association [http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/Chinese_Criminal_Enterprises.html]

==Page 340==

'''Hip Sing''' 
Like the On Leong, an influential Chinese-American criminal organization [http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/Chinese_Criminal_Enterprises.html].

Perhaps also a "hip" parody of the cook in ''Bonanza'', Hop Sing.

'''Bloody Angle''' 
Site of 20 hours of sustained combat at the Battle of Spotsylvania, 1864, thought possibly the most severe sustaned engagement of the American Civil War [http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/ABPP/BATTLES/va048.htm].

'''Word had gotten around''' 
Dahlia's experiences on Broadway play out like a perverse parody of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. Like Dahlia, Dreiser's heroine is a small town girl who makes the transition from bit-part player to star. Furthermore, Dahlia arrives in New York City in 1900, the same year that Sister Carrie was published.

'''morning-hat''' 
Not sure if it refers to a specific hat or a family of hats, but It was used in the title of a fashion article published in the New York Times on Feb. 23rd, 1908 [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F0CE3D81F3EE233A25750C2A9649C946997D6CF].
Most likely a casual girl hat, opposed to evening wear.

==Page 341==

'''highbinders''' 
Members of a Chinese-American criminal gang. (The word later came to apply to corrupt politicians.)

'''day club''' 
??? Speculation: what Pynchon is humorously calling a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nightstick nightstick] used in the daytime.

'''''Glans penis'''''-'''shaped helmets''' 
[[Image:glans-penis-shaped-helmet.jpg|thumb|''Glans penis''-shaped police helmet|right]] The odd, short-brimmed helmets worn by police officers in New York around the turn of the century and still worn by English police today [http://policehelmets.homestead.com/].

'''Mock Duck...firing two revolvers at a time in all directions''' 
Incredibly, Pynchon seems to be referencing the Hong Kong films of John Woo. The image of the Chinese gangster firing two guns simultaneously is a Woo trademark, first popularized in the 1986 film ''A Better Tomorrow'' and repeated in subsequent Woo films such as ''The Killer'' (1989) and ''Hard-Boiled'' (1992). The image was so closely associated with Woo's favorite leading man, Chow Yun-Fat, that it was even reprised for Chow's subsequent films in Hollywood.
According to Woo, the image of the outlaw firing two guns simultaneously was inspired by the final scene of ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid''. This is interesting in light of the Butch Cassidy references in the Telluride section of ATD. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woo#Trivia [wikipedia]]

There is an actual Tong leader being referenced here; Mock Duck was known for his two-gun style, but his methods were much different than Chow Yun-Fat's. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_Duck Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 342==

'''Tin Pan Alley''' 
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley Wikipedia]

'''acid magenta''' 
Acid dye is a member of a class of dye that is applied from an acidic solution. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_dye]

'''Con McVeety''' 
Investigation of the origins of family names on the North American continent has revealed that early immigrants bearing the name Veety or a variant (Veety has been written as MacVittie, MacVittye, MacVittae, MacWittie, MacWitty and many more) include: Alan MacWittie who settled in New England in 1685; Duncan McVittie arrived in Philadelphia Pa. in 1775. [http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/veety-family-crest.htm]

'''worst acts''' 
Itself a cliche, ''e.g'', Woody Allen's ''Broadway Danny Rose.''

==Page 343==

'''..seven-fifty a week..silent discussion.. "Ten?" and the deal was done.''' 
Curious deal here inluding the oxymoron but surely not cents nor dollars. 
Ten dollars in 1900 has the purchasing power in 2005 of
: $239.93 using the Consumer Price Index
: $205.36 using the GDP deflator

'''dime museum''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_museum Wikipedia]

'''absquatulate ''' 
to leave quickly or in a hurry. The phrase "in some haste to absquatulate' seems a bit redundant.

Found this interesting piece of knowledge on Freedictionary.com [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/] which explains the origins of a lot of the words used in AtD:
"In the 19th century, the vibrant energy of American English appeared in the use of Latin affixes to create jocular pseudo-Latin "learned" words. (...) Absquatulate has a prefix ab-, "away from," and a suffix -ate, "to act upon in a specified manner," affixed to a nonexistent base form -squatul-, probably suggested by squat. Hence the whimsical absquatulate, "to squat away from."

'''Olio''' 
A random collection (very roughly equivalent to the Spanish word ''zarzuela''). In music halls and variety theater an olio, here an act or acts unrelated to the "real" show, would go up in front of the curtain during long scene changes.

'''australian cockroach''' 
It is very unlikely that it was an Australian Cockroach (Periplaneta australasiae), which has a length of 3.0cm - 3.5cm (approx 1 1/4"-1 3/8"). Most likely refers to another (unwinged) species, called the Rhinoceros Cockroach or Giant Burrowing Cockroach (Macropanesthia rhinoceros) which is indigenous to Australia and can weigh up to 35 g (1.2 oz) and measure up to 3.15 in (80 mm) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_cockroach] Still a far cry from "the size of a sewer rat".

'''Bogoslaw Borowicz''' 
Borowicz is a polish name, patronymic from a pet form of Borowy, or from Borzyslaw, Bolebor, or some other personal name formed with the element bor ‘to fight’.

Found a reference to a Bogoslaw Borowicz in a scientific paper entitled "During Latency, Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 DNA Is Associated
with Nucleosomes in a Chromatin Structure" (!), published in 1989 in The Journal of Virology. [http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/reprint/63/2/943.pdf]

'''Floor show''' 
A Floorshow is a series of acts at a night club. That anyone could take this literally as "a display of floors" is both hilarious and very Pynchonian.

==Page 344==

'''strange tilings...mathematical issues''' 
This passage alludes to aperiodic tilings [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperiodic_tiling Wikipedia] such as the one discovered by Roger Penrose [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling Wikipedia]. See "The wallpaper in particular presented not a repeating pattern at all" [[ATD_171-198#Page_182|in annotations to p. 182.]]

'''Dr. Ictibus''' 
The Latin word ''ictus'' is from the past participle of īcere, to stike, blow, stab, wound; it can also refer to the wound itself. ''Ictibus'', is the ablative plural case for ''ictus'', thus we have Dr. Took-away-the-wounds.

'''Safe-Deflector Hat''' 
Dave Garroway supposedly had a hat that calculated the angle to be safe from falling bricks, if I recall correctly. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Garroway Wikipedia]

'''Odo''' 
Something to do with [http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/sainto26.htm Saint Odo], patron saint of rain?

Perhaps a reference to ''Star Trek'': Odo was the shape-shifting security officer of the space station ''Deep Space 9''. [http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Odo Star Trek Wiki]

Or to the anarchist Odo in Ursula LeGuin's novel ''The Dispossessed.''

In any case, Odo's onstage speech reflects the Mad Scientist's lab assistant in dozens of horror movies.

'''''figurante''''' 
a dancer; a ballet girl.
:also the (feminized) French term for "extra"

'''a coon revue''' 
Musical entertainment with African-American performers—or just as likely white performers in blackface—doing skits and singing songs that perpetuated a range of stereotypes: step-dancing, exaggerated dialect, lax morals, etc. Coon material was extremely popular in New York and elsewhere in the Jim Crow era (and it hasn't disappeared yet). For a partial list of coon references in ''AtD,'' [[ATD_26-56#Page_48|see annotation to p. 48.]]

'''Williams and Walker''' 
Bert Williams and George Walker, well-known vaudevillians who sometimes billed themselves as "The Two Real Coons." Williams was first to cross the color line as a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies. [http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/Harlem/text/williams_walker.html Here] is a good account of their careers.

'''Calpurnia... Mrs. Caesar''' 
Calpurnia was the wife of Julius Caesar and is a minor character in Shakespeare's play. She's a model of rectitude and courage, not someone who would like the subordinating title 'Mrs' which is thus a joke.

==Page 345==

'''Liu Bing''' 
One of three approaches to exegesis are possible here. 
:1) The name is a Chinese pun on English sounds and meanings. 
:2) The name is a reference to someone with this name. 
:3) The name is a reference to Chinese meanings in a Chinese or English pun. 
An example of the first approach: 
:Lubing? Like Lew Basnight as Lube-ass night [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_26-56#Page_36 see notes for page 36]. 

Two examples from the second approach: 
:Here, it is a woman, but in history Liu Bing was 
:1) The birth name of Emperor Chong of the Han Dynasty (143-145) who became emperor at the age of 1, and died a year later. 
:2) A high-ranking official of the Song Dynasty, (lived 433-477). 

Third approach: mix and match meanings for "Liu" and Bing". 

Liu can mean:
:lovely; beautiful; tassel; pomegranate; to flow; to spread; to circulate; to move clear; deep (of water); swift; precious stone; leave (message); to retain; to stay; to remain; to keep; to preserve; tumor; sulfur; bessemerizing of matte; lutetium; pure gold; sewing of wind; bay horse with black mane; large horned-owl; willow; skein; tuft; lock; creel; fish basket; the number 6; a clod of earth; land; the sound of the wind; to soar; to stroll; walk a horse; to stroll; to linger; dripping of rain from eaves, reheat by steaming

Bing can mean:
:soldiers; a force; an army; weapons; arms; military; war-like; ice; arrow-quiver; Trachycarpus excelsa; '''arecas'''; the third of the ten heavenly stems; the third position; third; number three; get rid of; put aside; reject; keep control; hold back; sad; mournful; bright; glorious; authority; handle; hilt; bright; brilliant; luminous(surname); to grasp; hold; maintain natural property or endowment; report to (a superior)bright ; shining, splendid(surname); ancient city name; happy; plate; scabbard; round flat cake; cookie; cake; pastry; furthermore; (not) at all; simultaneously; also; together with; to combine; to join; to merge amalgamate; combine; nightmare; start to sleep; ailment; sickness; illness; disease; fall ill; sick; defect.

So, Liu Bing might mean '''"lovely arecas,"''' "six cookies," "gold handle," "six soldiers" etc.

'''''Courage,'' Camille''' 
''Coo-RAZH,'' of course. The play ''Camille'' was adapted from ''The Lady of the Camellias'' (''La dame aux camélias,'' 1848) by Alexandre Dumas the Younger. In all French versions the character's name is Marguerite, so this gag only works in English-speaking countries.

'''Lillian Russell''' 
American actress and singer (1860-1922) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Russell Wikipedia entry]. Yes, she generally did wear a hat in her photos.

'''Verbena''' 
Continuing Pynchon's running joke of naming AtD's women after flowering herbs.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbena Wikipedia]

'''I.J. & K. Smokefoot''' 
Speculation: Smokefoot is the name of a song written by Bobby Keys, Jim Gordon, and Jim Price. It appears on the 1972 album "Bobby Keys." [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfixqw5ldae~T1 Bobby Keys] was a very much in demand session sax player, appearing on many well-known albums, including the Stones' "Sticky Fingers" where he plays an extended solo on "Can't You Hear Me Knockin." While this is not at all related to what's going on in AtD at the moment, it is a way that Pynchon comes up with names and Pynchon surely knows who Bobby Keys is.

:''Along with speculation,'' the name Smokefoot has some nonmusical grounding. There's a fairly numerous and widespread American clan named Rauchfuss. Their surname, obviously, is German—like those of some nonfictional department store magnates (Gimbel, Bergdorf, Saks). If the first immigrant Rauchfuss had translated his name into English it would have come out Smokefoot. Although a moderately large Google search does not turn up a Rauchfuss or Smokefoot in the business, it is '''not''' irrelevant that one form of this name is current in the population.

Quaternions based on 'i * j * k'.
:Not too sure about this connection: the choice of ''i'', ''j'', and ''k'' in the definition of quaternary space is arbitrary, as are ''x'', ''y'', and ''z'' in more conventional definitions of three-dimensional space. Could just be that Pynchon just wrote a little three letter sequence in alphabetical order. Is there anything in the text that would support the connection between the department store and quaternions?
::Well, ''x, y'' and ''z'' are just as arbitrary—but when you see the sequence you think "coordinates, 3-space, vectors." So ''i j k'' in the book's context does suggest a link to quaternion notation. This merits a closer look.

'''Ladies' Mile''' 
Broadway from 9th to 23rd Streets, Gilded Age location of all the most fashionable shops [http://www.preserve2.org/ladiesmile/]

==Page 346==

'''sussurant''' 
Whispering, making a low continuous indistinct sound [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=susurrant].

'''Jachin and Boaz''' 
The two pillars on the porch of Solomon's Temple. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaz_and_Jachin Wikipedia entry]. They also appear on the Tarot card of The High Priestess in the A.E. Waite Rider deck, whose designer, Pamela Colman Smith, is mentioned in ''ATD'' at p. 186. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Priestess Wikipedia entry].

'''just a kid''' 
Dally was born c1889, so 14 or 15?

'''newly introduced''' 
Paris 1900? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator Wikipedia]

==Page 347==

'''Yosemite Falls''' 
For pictures see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Falls Wikipedia].

'''"Her Mother Never Told Her"''' 
"Her mother never told her the things a young girl should know. 
About the ways of college men, and how they come and go, (mostly....go). 
Now age has taken her beauty, and sin has left its sad scar; 
So remember your mothers and sisters, boys, and let her sleep under the bar" [http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=2332 Lyrics]

'''the Tombs''' 
NYC prison.

==Page 348==

'''Saturday night in Kipperville''' 
Most likely a reference to the story ''Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel'' by Virginia Lee Burton, wherein Mike and promises to dig the cellar for Popperville's new town hall in one day using his steam shovel Mary Anne. The citizens from Kipperville and other nearby towns all come to watch. [[Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel|Read the Amazon description]].

'''arecas''' 
Areca is a genus of about 50 species of single-stemmed palms in the family Arecaceae, found in humid tropical forests from Malaysia to the Solomon Islands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areca wikipedia]

'''demimondaine''' 
A [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/demimondaine woman] belonging to the [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/demimonde demimonde]; a woman whose sexual promiscuity places her outside respectable society.

'''Perrier Jouet''' 
Brand of expensive Champagne.

'''ticker-tape machines''' 
Before the crawl at the bottom of the screen, you could get a Dow-Jones ticker installed in your home or office to bring you the latest from the market. Other ticker services delivered news, sports scores, etc., all printed out on a narrow paper tape. On days of special celebration, New York City allowed people to throw ticker tape from buildings—which on any other day would be a misdemeanor—hence the fossil expression "ticker-tape parade."

==Page 349==

'''Oomie Vamplet''' 
??? Pure speculation: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=oomie oomie]. Vamplet has a [http://onlinedictionary.datasegment.com/word/vamplet definition], but also sounds like a vamp (a woman who uses her sex appeal to entrap and exploit men) who is small. Also, to vamp in music is to improvise simple accompaniment or variation of a tune.

'''Kate Chase Sprague''' 
Kate Chase Sprague was the daughter of Civil War era cabinet member Salmon P. Chase and wife of Rhode Island Governor William Sprague. She was accused of having had an affair with New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Chase wikipedia]

'''Congo violet''' 
evidently a real color: Violet dyes: trisulphon violet 2B, Congo violet;
from a patent application, # 4025164. www.patentsonline. A quite dark violet, I think, is implied...lots of associations to Congo.

'''"Funiculi, Funicula"''' 
A very popular Neapolitan song composed in 1880 by Italian composer Luigi Denza (cf p.353) to commemorate the opening of the first '''funicular''' (inclined railway) on Mount Vesuvius. The song's huge success made the Neapolitan songs spreading all over the world. In the '50s Mario Lanza made this song popular in the US but with slightly changed English lyrics. For the lyrics in its original Neapolitan dialect and English see [http://www.vesuvioinrete.it/funicolare/e_funicolare_funiculi.htm].

At least three times in ''AtD'' we have an instrumental tag to identify the nationality of a person entering the scene. Here it's the Italian one (never mind that Zombini's family comes from northern Italy, not Naples); there's also a four-note plinka-plinka to announce a Chinese person (on page ???) and an alphorn solo to cue a Swiss person (page ???).

==Page 350==

'''Chinchito''' 
"Little Bug." (Wasn't Herve Villachaise supposed to be well endowed?)

'''in the wallpaper''' 
Cf Lew on cyclomite.

'''Mickey Finn''' 
Mickey Finn in the punch is a drug-laced (clasically chloral hydrate) knockout drink. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Finn_%28drugs%29 Wikipedia].

==Page 351==

'''Sweet Caporal''' 
A [http://www.adclassix.com/ads/55sweetcaporal.htm brand] of cigarette.

'''came for me''' 
On page 69 Erlys left this note: "I'll be back for her when I can."

'''"French flat"''' 
A category then used for buildings that fell between single-family dwellings and boardinghouses - see [http://www.arch.columbia.edu/hp/studio/2005-2006/resources/resources_primary1.html here]

'''Pitti Palace''' 
The Palazzo Pitti is a vast mainly Renaissance palace in Florence. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Pitti Wikipedia]

'''''grattacielo''''' 
Italian: skyscraper.

'''Bria''' 
Daughter of Erlys Mills and Luca Zombini.

==Page 352==

'''''Little Nemo''''' 
A full-page color cartoon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo_in_Slumberland Wikipedia] by Winsor McCay, started on October 15, 1905. Published in the New York Herald until 1911.

'''melted icebox ice''' 
(How nasty would this have been?)

'''majolica''' 
Tin-glazed earthenware [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majolica wikipedia]

'''Fletcher's Castoria''' 
A patent medicine composed of senna, sodium bicarbonate, essence of wintergreen, taraxicum, sugar and water, used as a laxative. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoria Wikipedia entry].

'''three-cent pieces''' 
The U.S. minted three-cent coins until 1889.

'''''La Forza del Destino''''' 
Literally, the "force of destiny." An opera by Verdi [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Forza_del_Destino wikipedia]

'''''cretino''''' 
Cretin

==Page 353==

'''Luigi Denza''' 
Luigi Denza (2846-1922) was an Italian composer. In 1898, he moved to London and became a professor of singing at at the Royal Academy of Music.
Among the hundreds of songs he wrote, the most popular one was the Neapolitan song (1880) ''Funiculi, Funicula'' (cf 349). [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Denza Wikipedia].

'''Psyche knot''' 
The knot in which Psyche kept her hair, as shown in ads for White Rock mineral water during this time frame. [http://www.whiterocking.org/pcw.html Pictures here].

==Page 354==

'''''"bella"''''' 
sweetheart; beauty.

'''Friuli''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friuli Border area of Italy,Austria and Slovenia, N. of Trieste]. Its main provinces are Udine, Gorizia, Pordenone and Trieste. It's not part of the South Tyrol. It's been part of post WWII disputes with Jugoslavia and it's subject to still ongoing polemics on the conflicts between antifascist groups and local fastist-supporting population (s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foibe Foibe])

'''donkey salami''' 
Italian sausage-makers do use donkey meat; look for ''salame d'asino'' or ''mortadella di asino.'' It is not imported into the U.S. 

From Robert Musil's ''The Man Without Qualitites'' p. 939 of the 1995 translation by S. Wilkins. Musil and his lead character Ulrich had both served in the Austro-Hungarian army.

:''Considering the window display of German intellect, Ulrich was reminded of an old army joke: "Mortadella." This had been the nickname of an unpopular general, after the popular Italian sausage, and if anyone wondered why, the answer was: "Part pig, part donkey."''

'''like Austria, with gestures''' 
:One of the finest news films ever shown on TV concerned a regional election in this part of Italy. The candidates spoke excellent German but used their arms and hands in a highly un-German way.

'''platinum black''' 
"a fine black powder of platinum; used as a catalyst in chemical reactions" [http://www.answers.com/topic/platinum-black cite]

This whole paragraph describes what amounts to a Black Hole, from which not even light can emerge.

:No. It describes the "Black Body Radiation" discovered around 1900. It's quite different from a black hole. Of course, the latter is much much more popular. In physics a black body is an ideal body that absorbs without reflection all of the electromagnetic radiation (light is one of them) incident on its surface. Since in here there is no extreme gravity involved but blackness, with the author's engineering educational background and with the topic of "light" frequently discussed in the book, and Zombini here is talking about light reflection, clearly reference to black body radiation is more appropriate. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbody_radiation Wikipedia].

'''''affondato, vero?''''' 
Italian for "Sunk, isn'it?" as in the battleship game.

'''bloody horror shows''' 
A reference to the Grand Guignol theater in Paris, which opened in 1897, known for its gory shows. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_guignol Wikipedia entry].

==Page 355==

'''Doubles the image...''' 
Suggestive of quantum doubling, i.e. universe splitting in one version/solution of the Multiverse problem.

'''''capisci?''''' 
Italian: you understand?

'''Houdini''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini Wikipedia]

'''''Porca miseria''''' 
All-purpose Italian expletive, not too crude. Translates into English as damn!

'''Teatro Malibran''' 
The 900-seat theather was built in 1677 for drama, opera and classical concerts. It was originally named Teatro di San Giovanni Crisostomo and later changed to Teatro Malibran to honor Maria Malibran, a well-known soprano of the early 19th century. During its long history the theather has been refurbished and rennovated numerous times, most recently in 2001. It is a beautiful landmark theather. It's doubtful Teatro Malibran is a proper venue for magic shows. For the beautiful indoor and outdoor pictures [http://www.noehill.com/med/med2002/malibran.asp Teatro Malibran].

==Page 356==

'''''Stupendica''''' 
Example of Pynchon's marvelous ship names (e.g. ''USS Scaffold'' and ''Susannah Squaducci'' in ''V.''); perhaps a play on ''Titanic''.

'''Chinese Gong Effect''' 
???

'''East Rumelian''' 
East Rumelia was an autonomous Bulgarian province, fomerly an Ottoman dependency south of the Balkans. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 it was to be ruled by Turkey but with a Christian prince as part of a complex territorial power-balance agreeable to all Powers at the 1878 Congress of Berlin. Interestingly, an area in which the Glagolitic alphabet was propounded (see P.252).

'''Erlys remembered''' 
(Why not Dally?)

==Page 357==

'''Bert Snidell''' 
Bert Snidell was first mentioned on page 75.

'''Hindoo shuffle''' 
Hindoo, or Hindu, shuffle is one of numerous ways of shuffling playing cards. For a description [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuffling_playing_cards#Hindu_shuffle Wikipedia].

'''French drop''' 
A well-known vanishing act of a small object involving sleight of hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drop Wikipedia].

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

Pynchon Playboy Interview

2008-06-11T23:26:26Z

Bleakhaus: /* Comments */

A supposed "interview" was published in an issue of Playboy Japan, entitled "Most News is Propaganda. Bin Laden May Not Exist." It purported to be a talk with Pynchon on the events of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. Its authenticity has been disputed, and few facts exist to prove one way or another whether Pynchon actually said or wrote the opinions printed. Got info? Add it!
----

Talk by Thomas Pynchon

Rough translation by Naoki on the [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0112&msg=63606&keywords=playboy Pynchon-L list]

Most News Is Propaganda. Bin Laden May Not Exist.

All people who live in New York today have been talking about recently is whether they have been to the site of the World Trade Center. This is because it has become a "trendy" topic. Personally, I still cannot find myself wanting to go see the site.

The main thing that has changed in my life-style recently is the fact that I do not ride the subway anymore. Before, I got on the subway wherever I went but today, I never ride the subway in fear of biological weapons. After all, there was the case with the Tokyo Sarin Gas. I believe that the damage that can be caused by the biological weapon called antrax is increasing and we are in a situation where someone could use biological weapons at any time.

The media station that is consistently giving reports on this terrorist case is CNN. Because everybody watches CNN, it would be safe to say that the news being watched by all of the citizens is the same. However, it is dangerous when people start to believe that what they see is real news.

For the television stations this kind of situation should be a great chance to express their individuality. However, the only thing the newscasters do is read the news in a monotonous voice or when the news comes on during the report, all they do is spit out the words they receive. In any case, they talk with the mere intention of filling up the time they have on air.

The adjective "affect less" best fits the way the newscasters talk. It is a way of expression that has no connection to the human being and no emotional power at all. I deprecate this way of expression. If you listen closely to those words, it doesn't sound like real news. It sounds more like propaganda.

Talking of propaganda, what changed the most due to the terrorist incident is The New York Times. Until recently, I would wake up an hour early to go buy this newspaper but now, there it isn't even worth the time to sit down and read it. Even before I place my hips in the seat, I am already finished reading it by flipping through the pages. It wouldn't be wrong to say that there is hardly any useful news. It is mostly propaganda.

The news on how there are more antibiotics to antrax other than cipro was a little useful, but that kind of useful news has become a rarity. The New York Times is usually known to be the most reliable source of media when doing research on something that happened twenty to thirty years ago. However, that is no longer the case. The most reliable newspaper that is read by educated people today is probably England's The Guardian. Everyone is reading it on the internet. I also believe that a lot of the information coming out of the White House is also propaganda.

The problem is that common people cannot make a distinction between news and propaganda. On the contrary, the news sent out from Isreal is extremely reliable.

In any case, once a war happens, the war for media becomes a great significance and even the newspapers that look decent at first glance, you can no longer trust. About a hundred years ago, the man who started publishing the Daily Mile said the following: "News is something somebody wants to suppress. Everything else is propaganda."

Therefore, all information that can be obtained without difficult coverage, even though it may be from the White House, you can think of as propaganda.

Bin Laden should be looked upon as a symbol

The United States has always had a tendancy to look for an enemy. It is a country that cannot stand not having one. Even for this terrorist incident, it is already determined that the villain behind all of this is bin Laden, but in reality they are saying that because they cannot stand not doing so. I believe that bin Laden is someone's clown for a rodeo.

Although my thoughts are always paranoid, I believe that I'm the only one who feels this way. It is said that NSA is on a lookout for him but I think that like an onion, new layers will be discovered. No matter how I look at the situation, it doesn't seem like bin Laden is doing this independently. The only impression that I get is that he is some kind of star actor.

Honestly speaking, we cannot even tell if the face that comes out on television and on the newspapers is his real face. I remember someone saying right after the terrorist incident, "Come on, you want bin Laden? We'll give you 20 of him." Even if the United States succeeds in killing him that would mean that there are still 19 bin Ladens left. Even if there is only one, there are probably many people who would take his place once they kill bin Laden.

If we look at this from a different point-of-view, we should look at bin Laden as a symbol rather than a man. Bin Laden may not even exist.

The other day when I was surfing the net, it said that the punishment that suits bin Laden the best is to catch him alive, bring him to a hospital, give him a transexual operation, and send him back to Afghanistan. He would then understand the disservice done to the women in Afghanistan.

We cannot forget that many of bin Laden's brothers were partners with George Bush Jr. for the purpose of oil ventures in the past. The doctor who is known to be at bin Laden's side at all times was a member of the group who killed Sadat. When that assassination happened, Egypt became involved and there must have been people who fled to Afghanistan.

What is often said is that it is the United State's wealth that is the cause of the terrorists' hatred. I can understand their feelings well. When I see a wealthy person, I instinctively feel anger deep in my stomach. If you think about how Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, it is only natural for them to feel hatred toward the wealthy United States. They have no other choice but to detest them.

Even if the United States stops their support for Isreal, I don't think that everything will become peaceful. However, from their point-of-view this is the origin of all Isreal's mistakes.

On a final note, if I were to vigorously invest in something right now, I would invest in the tobacco industry. After that incident, people who had stopped smoking before have started it again.

==Comments==
I for one am inclined to believe its authenticity. It expresses many of Pynchon's longest- and deepest-held thoughts:

* Paranoia - afraid to ride subway.
* Extended thoughts on his distrust of news media - mentions CNN in particular (same station that [http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ tracked him down at one point]).
* He suggests that he used to like the New York Times - in fact, he [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html wrote] [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html numerous] [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html articles] for the Times.
* Bin Laden as a symbol - 9/11 is treated symbolically in ''Against the Day''.
* sense of humor - consistent with Pynchon's sense of humor in ''Against the Day''.
* The Playboy Japan article also quoted John Updike, Thomas Friedman and others. It would be odd that a bogus Pynchon interview would end up mixed in with those legitimate interviews.
* Hating the rich - a very strong theme in ''Against the Day''.

Finally, like Pynchon's Simpsons appearance, the whole thing is just too unusual to be invented. Playboy Japan, of all things? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 16:00, 11 June 2008 (PDT)

Pynchon Playboy Interview

2008-06-11T23:00:01Z

Bleakhaus:

A supposed "interview" was published in an issue of Playboy Japan, entitled "Most News is Propaganda. Bin Laden May Not Exist." It purported to be a talk with Pynchon on the events of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. Its authenticity has been disputed, and few facts exist to prove one way or another whether Pynchon actually said or wrote the opinions printed. Got info? Add it!
----

Talk by Thomas Pynchon

Rough translation by Naoki on the [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0112&msg=63606&keywords=playboy Pynchon-L list]

Most News Is Propaganda. Bin Laden May Not Exist.

All people who live in New York today have been talking about recently is whether they have been to the site of the World Trade Center. This is because it has become a "trendy" topic. Personally, I still cannot find myself wanting to go see the site.

The main thing that has changed in my life-style recently is the fact that I do not ride the subway anymore. Before, I got on the subway wherever I went but today, I never ride the subway in fear of biological weapons. After all, there was the case with the Tokyo Sarin Gas. I believe that the damage that can be caused by the biological weapon called antrax is increasing and we are in a situation where someone could use biological weapons at any time.

The media station that is consistently giving reports on this terrorist case is CNN. Because everybody watches CNN, it would be safe to say that the news being watched by all of the citizens is the same. However, it is dangerous when people start to believe that what they see is real news.

For the television stations this kind of situation should be a great chance to express their individuality. However, the only thing the newscasters do is read the news in a monotonous voice or when the news comes on during the report, all they do is spit out the words they receive. In any case, they talk with the mere intention of filling up the time they have on air.

The adjective "affect less" best fits the way the newscasters talk. It is a way of expression that has no connection to the human being and no emotional power at all. I deprecate this way of expression. If you listen closely to those words, it doesn't sound like real news. It sounds more like propaganda.

Talking of propaganda, what changed the most due to the terrorist incident is The New York Times. Until recently, I would wake up an hour early to go buy this newspaper but now, there it isn't even worth the time to sit down and read it. Even before I place my hips in the seat, I am already finished reading it by flipping through the pages. It wouldn't be wrong to say that there is hardly any useful news. It is mostly propaganda.

The news on how there are more antibiotics to antrax other than cipro was a little useful, but that kind of useful news has become a rarity. The New York Times is usually known to be the most reliable source of media when doing research on something that happened twenty to thirty years ago. However, that is no longer the case. The most reliable newspaper that is read by educated people today is probably England's The Guardian. Everyone is reading it on the internet. I also believe that a lot of the information coming out of the White House is also propaganda.

The problem is that common people cannot make a distinction between news and propaganda. On the contrary, the news sent out from Isreal is extremely reliable.

In any case, once a war happens, the war for media becomes a great significance and even the newspapers that look decent at first glance, you can no longer trust. About a hundred years ago, the man who started publishing the Daily Mile said the following: "News is something somebody wants to suppress. Everything else is propaganda."

Therefore, all information that can be obtained without difficult coverage, even though it may be from the White House, you can think of as propaganda.

Bin Laden should be looked upon as a symbol

The United States has always had a tendancy to look for an enemy. It is a country that cannot stand not having one. Even for this terrorist incident, it is already determined that the villain behind all of this is bin Laden, but in reality they are saying that because they cannot stand not doing so. I believe that bin Laden is someone's clown for a rodeo.

Although my thoughts are always paranoid, I believe that I'm the only one who feels this way. It is said that NSA is on a lookout for him but I think that like an onion, new layers will be discovered. No matter how I look at the situation, it doesn't seem like bin Laden is doing this independently. The only impression that I get is that he is some kind of star actor.

Honestly speaking, we cannot even tell if the face that comes out on television and on the newspapers is his real face. I remember someone saying right after the terrorist incident, "Come on, you want bin Laden? We'll give you 20 of him." Even if the United States succeeds in killing him that would mean that there are still 19 bin Ladens left. Even if there is only one, there are probably many people who would take his place once they kill bin Laden.

If we look at this from a different point-of-view, we should look at bin Laden as a symbol rather than a man. Bin Laden may not even exist.

The other day when I was surfing the net, it said that the punishment that suits bin Laden the best is to catch him alive, bring him to a hospital, give him a transexual operation, and send him back to Afghanistan. He would then understand the disservice done to the women in Afghanistan.

We cannot forget that many of bin Laden's brothers were partners with George Bush Jr. for the purpose of oil ventures in the past. The doctor who is known to be at bin Laden's side at all times was a member of the group who killed Sadat. When that assassination happened, Egypt became involved and there must have been people who fled to Afghanistan.

What is often said is that it is the United State's wealth that is the cause of the terrorists' hatred. I can understand their feelings well. When I see a wealthy person, I instinctively feel anger deep in my stomach. If you think about how Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, it is only natural for them to feel hatred toward the wealthy United States. They have no other choice but to detest them.

Even if the United States stops their support for Isreal, I don't think that everything will become peaceful. However, from their point-of-view this is the origin of all Isreal's mistakes.

On a final note, if I were to vigorously invest in something right now, I would invest in the tobacco industry. After that incident, people who had stopped smoking before have started it again.

==Comments==
I for one am inclined to believe its authenticity. It expresses many of Pynchon's longest- and deepest-held thoughts:

* Paranoia - afraid to ride subway.
* Extended thoughts on his distrust of news media - mentions CNN in particular (same station that [http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ tracked him down at one point]).
* He suggests that he used to like the New York Times - in fact, he [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html wrote] [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html numerous] [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html articles] for the Times.
* Bin Laden as a symbol - 9/11 is treated symbolically in ''Against the Day''.
* sense of humor - consistent with Pynchon's sense of humor in ''Against the Day''.
* The Playboy Japan article also quoted John Updike, Thomas Friedman and others. It would be odd that a bogus Pynchon interview would end up mixed in with those legitimate interviews.

Finally, like Pynchon's Simpsons appearance, the whole thing is just too unusual to be invented. Playboy Japan, of all things? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 16:00, 11 June 2008 (PDT)

Oxford article comments

2008-06-11T22:25:49Z

Bleakhaus:

'''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086671 Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki].

The present page is set aside for comments and corrections to this article (in other words, a wiki on a paper on a wiki).

=Commentary by Bleakhaus=
My personal thanks to Ralph Schroeder and Matthijs den Besten for their thoughtful and rigorous analysis of Pynchon Wiki and its greater significance in the Wild West of collaborative research.

The following commentary follows a far looser standard than I'd use when contributing to or editing other parts of the Pynchonwiki. I do this to experiment with a more personal form of commentary and see if it produces anything useful. "[[Against_the_Day_description|Let the reader decide, let the reader beware.]]" I use the pagination of the paper at SSRN.

==Page 1==
'''low tech''' 
It's curious that Internet researchers would use this term to describe a literary wiki. Sure, it ain't a particle accelerator, but still the highest-tech solution yet applied to literary collaboration or research.

==Page 3==
'''"The Pynchon Wiki can thus be seen as an example of humanities e-research, though it could equally be seen as an amateur or hobbyist effort or as a community of fans of the author."''' 
It would be interesting to see what kind of wiki annotation emerged if written by an army of an author's enemies, rather than fans like us here. Think of a Republican commentary wiki on Bill Clinton's autobiography, or a Democrat critique of Reagan's.

==Page 4==
'''"whether speed and openness to all contributors have come at the cost of quality."''' 
The entries on Pynchonwiki vary in quality. Most are useful, but there are still too many that are overly long, irrelevant, or completely unfounded theory. After laying the groundwork for the page-by-page section I battled early on with a handful contributors who were taking the commentary away from what we'd find in Weisenberger, for instance with personal commentary, jokes, digressions and comparisons (cf.) which veered too far away from the text at hand. These contributors were and are always free to create a separate area of Pynchonwiki for adding such content, (say, "Bleakhaus's suggested interpretations and comparisons for each page of ''Against the Day''"), but none has yet done so. I believe some of these guys felt slighted by my edits but I believed then and now that the already enormous wiki would have become much longer and less useful if I and others had not steered it into its current form.

==Page 6==
'''"being able to recognize and understand his sources enhances the appreciation of his fiction."''' 
I've come to believe that Pynchon is one of the handful of authors who benefit from such extensive annotation. Pynchonwiki was a success because it was the right tool for the right book at the right time. I have since created a similar site, [http://literarywiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page|Literarywiki.org], which is essentially Pynchonwiki for all other books, but after some months of tinkering I find that few other books benefit from the wiki annotation treatment, even some books with similarly enormous amounts of references (such as ''Foucault's Pendulum'' by Eco, in which the abundance of information is used as a spice and digging up each reference does not necessarily illuminate anything).

==Page 10==
"'''the Wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's half-baked opinions and Kinbote-esque commentary"''' 
Thankfully this did not occur once the general ground rules were established early on, not so much by fiat or even agreement as much as the example of existing entries. Although I'm proud of what we accomplished, part of me wishes that parts of the wiki had gotten a bit more wild and wooly :)

==Page 18==
'''"Finally, the fact that the pages ‘Against the Day Title’ and ‘The Sexual Angle’ receive more edits than ‘Thomas Pynchon’ is a sign that the contributors to ‘Against the Day’ are less concerned with the author himself but are more interested in the book itself."''' 
Not necessarily true. The [[Thomas Pynchon]] entry as been edited only a little because it was copied whole from Wikipedia and there's not much to add.

Template:Pynchon Bio

2008-06-11T22:21:50Z

Bleakhaus: /* 2000s */

[[image:pynchon-simpsons.jpg|right]]'''Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr.''' (born May 8, 1937) is an American writer based in New York City. He is noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known today: ''[http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ V.]'' (1963), ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49]'' (1966), ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]'' (1973), ''[http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Vineland]'' (1990), ''[http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Mason & Dixon]'' (1997), and ''[http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Against the Day]'' (2006).

Pynchon is regarded by many readers and critics as one of the finest contemporary authors. He is a MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science and mathematics. Pynchon is also known for his avoidance of personal publicity: very few photographs of him have ever been published, and rumors about his location and identity have been circulated since the 1960s.

==Biography==
Thomas Pynchon was born in 1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, one of three children of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Sr. (1907-1995) and Katherine Frances Bennett (1909-1996). His earliest American ancestor, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pynchon William Pynchon], emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony]] with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Pynchon's family background and aspects of his ancestry have provided source material for his fictions, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in "The Secret Integration" (1964) and ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]''.

===Childhood and education===
Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School, where he was awarded "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper: "Voice of the Hamster",<ref>[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html "Voice of the Hamster"]</ref> "The Boys",<ref>[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html "The Boys"]</ref> and "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight".<ref>[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple"]</ref> These works featured many of the themes and literary devices he would use throughout his career: silly names, rampant drug use, and paranoia. After graduating in 1953 at the age of 16, he studied engineering physics at Cornell University, but left at the end of his second year to serve in the U.S. Navy. In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, "The Small Rain", appeared in the ''Cornell Writer'' in May 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the army; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy.

While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fariña Richard Fariña], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a "micro-cult" around Oakley Hall's 1958 novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlock_(novel) Warlock]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Been_Down_So_Long_It_Looks_Like_Up_to_Me Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov], who then taught literature at Cornell. While Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon (although Nabokov's wife, Vera, who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting; his later handwriting appears unexceptional), other teachers at Cornell, like the novelist James McConkey, recall him as being a gifted and exceptional student. In 1958, Pynchon and Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical, ''Minstral Island'', which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world. [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html] Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.

===''V.''===
After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel. From February 1960 to September 1962, he was employed as a technical writer at Boeing in Seattle, where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News,''<ref>Wisnicki 2000-1</ref> a support newsletter for the BOMARC surface-to-air missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force. Pynchon's experiences at Boeing inspired his depictions of the "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyodyne Yoyodyne]" corporation in ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. V.]'' and ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow].'' When it was published in 1963, Pynchon's novel ''V.'' won a William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year.

After resigning from Boeing, Pynchon spent time in New York and Mexico before moving to California, where he was reportedly based for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, most notably in an apartment in Manhattan Beach, in Southern California.<ref>Frost 2003</ref> Pynchon during this period embraced the lifestyle and values of the hippie counterculture, which he would later make use of in his 1990 novel ''[http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Vineland].''<ref>Gordon 1994</ref> In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, was turned down.<ref name="royster2005">Royster 2005</ref> In 1966, he wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the Watts riots in Los Angeles. Entitled "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts," the article was published in the ''New York Times Magazine.''<ref>Pynchon 1966</ref>

From the mid-1960s Pynchon has also regularly provided blurbs and introductions for a wide range of novels and non-fiction works. One of the first of these pieces was a brief review of Hall's ''Warlock'' which appeared, along with comments by seven other writers on "neglected books", as part of a feature entitled "A Gift of Books" in the December 1965 issue of ''Holiday.''

===''The Crying of Lot 49''===

In April 1964, Pynchon wrote to his agent, Candida Donadio, that he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, and that "If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium."<ref>Gussow 1998</ref> In December 1965, Pynchon politely turned down an offer to teach literature at Bennington College, writing that he had resolved, two or three years earlier, to write three novels at once.<ref>McLemee 2006</ref> Pynchon called the decision "a moment of temporary insanity," but noted that he was "too stubborn to let any of them go, let alone all of them."

Pynchon's second novel, ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49],'' was published a few months later in 1966. Whether it was one of the three or four novels Pynchon had in progress is unknown, but in a 1965 letter to Donadio, Pynchon had written that he was in the middle of writing a book that he called a "potboiler." When the book grew to 155 pages, he called it, "a short story, but with gland trouble," and hoped that Donadio "can unload it on some poor sucker." This would suggest that ''Crying of Lot 49'' was ''not'' one of the four novels Pynchon was writing as of 1964, but no answer is certain.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award shortly after publication. Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as "The Tristero" or "Trystero," a parody of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/revenge_play Jacobean revenge drama] entitled "The Courier's Tragedy," and a corporate conspiracy involving the bones of World War II American GIs being used as charcoal cigarette filters. It proposes a series of seemingly incredible interconnections between these and other similarly bizarre revelations that confront the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Like ''V,'' the novel contains a wealth of references to science and technology and to obscure historical events, and both books dwell upon the detritus of American society and culture. ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also continues Pynchon's habit of composing parodic song lyrics and punning names, and referencing aspects of popular culture within his prose narrative. In particular, it incorporates several allusions to the Beatles and Nabokov's ''Lolita.''

In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest." Full-page advertisements in ''The New York Post'' and ''The New York Review of Books'' listed the names of those who had pledged not to pay "the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase," and stated their belief "that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong".<ref>''New York Review of Books'' 1968:9</ref>

===''Gravity's Rainbow'' and Pynchon's rise to prominence===
Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]'', published in 1973. An intricate and allusive fiction which combines and elaborates on many of the themes of his earlier work, including preterition, paranoia, racism, colonialism, conspiracy, synchronicity, and [[entropy]], the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including two reader's guides,<ref>Fowler 1980; Weisenburger 1988</ref> books and scholarly articles, on-line concordances and discussions,<ref>[http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ Pynchon HyperArts]</ref> and art works, and is regarded as one of the archetypal texts of American literary postmodernism. The major portion of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' takes place in London and Europe in the final months of the Second World War and the weeks immediately following VE Day, and is narrated for the most part from within the historical moment in which it is set. In this way, Pynchon's text enacts a type of dramatic irony whereby neither the characters nor the various narrative voices are aware of specific historical circumstances, such as the Holocaust, which are, however, very much to the forefront of the reader's understanding of this time in history. Such an approach generates dynamic tension and moments of acute self-consciousness, as both reader and author seem drawn ever deeper into the "plot", in various senses of that term. Encyclopedic in scope, the novel also displays enormous erudition in its treatment of an array of material drawn from the fields of psychology, chemistry, mathematics, history, religion, music, literature and film. Perhaps appropriately for a book so suffused with engineering knowledge, Pynchon reportedly wrote the first draft of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in longhand on engineer's graph paper, in California and Mexico City.

''Gravity's Rainbow'' was a joint winner of the 1974 National Book Award for Fiction, along with Isaac Bashevis Singer's ''A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories''. In the same year, the fiction jury unanimously recommended ''Gravity's Rainbow'' for the Pulitzer Prize; however, the Pulitzer board vetoed the jury's recommendation, describing the novel as "unreadable", "turgid", "overwritten", and in parts "obscene", and no prize was awarded.<ref>Kihss 1974</ref> In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

===Post-''Gravity's Rainbow''===
A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, entitled ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiography|autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article entitled "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" was published in the ''New York Times Book Review''. In April 1988, Pynchon contributed an extensive review of Gabriel García Marquéz's novel, ''Love in the Time of Cholera'', to the ''New York Times'', under the title "The Heart's Eternal Vow". Another article, entitled "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", was published in June 1993 in the ''New York Times Book Review'', as one in a series of articles in which various writers reflected on each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pynchon's subject was "Sloth".

===''Vineland''===
Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Vineland]'', was published in 1990. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s, and describes the relationship between an FBI COINTELPRO agent and a female radical filmmaker. Its strong socio-political undercurrents detail the constant battle between authoritarianism and communalism, and the nexus between resistance and complicity, but with a typically Pynchonian sense of humor.

In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, many observers have mentioned Pynchon as a Nobel Prize contender.<ref>See, for example, Grimes 1993, CNN Book News 1999, Ervin 2000</ref> Renowned American literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Cormac McCarthy.

===''Mason & Dixon''===
Pynchon's fifth novel, ''[http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Mason & Dixon]'', was published in 1997. Pynchon began writing it as early as January 1975.<ref>Gussow</ref> The meticulously-researched novel is a sprawling saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mason Charles Mason], and his partner, the surveyor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Dixon Jeremiah Dixon], and the birth of the American Republic. While it received some negative reviews, the great majority of commentators acknowledged it as a welcome return to form, and some, including Bloom, have called it Pynchon's greatest work to date.

After the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'', a user by the online name of "Martin Scribler" posted a handful of messages on the Pynchon-L mailing list denouncing many members of that group as "dunces all" for discussing their own neuroses over actual literary discussion. Due to the high quality of Martin Scriblers' posts, their message, and the historical significance of his name (alluding to an 18th-century satire of pretentious erudition), many have speculated that Pynchon himself wrote these posts.

===''Against the Day''===

A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of Pynchon's next book have circulated over a number of years. Most specific of these were comments made by the former German minister of culture, Michael Naumann, who stated that he assisted Pynchon in his research about "a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert David Hilbert] in Göttingen", and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Kovalevskaya Sofia Kovalevskaya].

In July 2006, a new untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a synopsis written by Pynchon himself, which appeared on Amazon.com, stating that the novel's action takes place between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition 1893 Chicago World's Fair] and the time immediately following World War I. "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead," Pynchon writes in his Book Description, "it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred." He promises cameos by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Nikola Tesla], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Lugosi Bela Lugosi] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx Groucho Marx], as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices". Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported as ''Against the Day'' and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.<ref>Patterson 2006b; Italie 2006</ref>

''Against the Day'' was released November 21, 2006 and is 1,085 pages long in the first edition hardcover. The book was given almost no promotion by Penguin and professional book reviewers were given little time in advance to review the book, presumably in accord with Pynchon's wishes. An edited version of Pynchon's synopsis was used as the jacket flap copy and Kovalevskaya does appear, although as only one of over a hundred characters.

There has been no consensus among professional book reviewers, although many agree that it is by turns brilliant and exhausting ([http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_Reviews Complete Reviews]). An [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page ''Against the Day'' wiki] was launched on the same day the novel was published to help readers keep track of the numerous characters, events and themes.

==Themes and influence==
Along with its emphasis on loftier themes such as racism, imperialism and religion, and its cognizance and appropriation of many elements of traditional high culture and literary form, Pynchon's work also demonstrates a strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of low culture, including comic books and animated cartoons, pulp fiction, popular films, television programs, cookery, urban myths, conspiracy theories, and folk art. This blurring of the conventional boundary between "High" and "low" culture, sometimes interpreted as a "deconstruction", is seen as one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism.

In particular, Pynchon has revealed himself in his fiction and non-fiction as an aficionado of popular music. Song lyrics and mock musical numbers appear in each of his novels, and, in his autobiographical introduction to the ''Slow Learner'' collection of early stories, he reveals a fondness for both jazz and rock and roll. The character McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' is a fictional composite of master jazz musicians such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornette_Coleman Ornette Coleman], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parker Charlie Parker] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk Thelonious Monk]. In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', the lead singer of "The Paranoids" sports "a [[The Beatles|Beatle]] haircut" and sings with an English accent. In the closing pages of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', there is an apocryphal report that [[Tyrone Slothrop]], the novel's protagonist, played kazoo and harmonica as a guest musician on a record released by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(band) The Fool] in the 1960s (having magically recovered the latter instrument, his "harp", in a German stream in 1945, after losing it down the toilet in 1939 at the Roseland Ballroom in Roxbury, Massachusetts, to the strains of the jazz standard "Cherokee", upon which tune Charlie Parker was simultaneously inventing bebop in New York, as Pynchon describes). In ''Vineland'', both Zoyd Wheeler and Isaiah Two Four are also musicians: Zoyd played keyboards in a '60s surf band called "The Corvairs", while Isaiah played in a punk band called "Billy Barf and the Vomitones". In ''Mason & Dixon'', one of the characters plays on the "Clavier" the varsity drinking song which will later become "The Star-Spangled Banner".

In his ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner Slow Learner]'' introduction, Pynchon acknowledges a debt to the anarchic bandleader Spike Jones, and in 1994, he penned a 3000-word set of liner notes for the album ''Spiked!'', a collection of Jones's recordings released on the short-lived BMG Catalyst label. Pynchon also wrote the liner notes for ''Nobody's Cool'', the second album of indie rock band Lotion, in which he states that "rock and roll remains one of the last honorable callings, and a working band is a miracle of everyday life. Which is basically what these guys do." He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.

In terms of literary influences and affinity, an eclectic catalogue of Pynchonian precursors has been proposed by readers and critics. Beside overt references in the novels to writers as disparate as Henry Adams, Isaac Asimov, Giorgio de Chirico, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Ishmael Reed, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Patrick O'Brian, and Umberto Eco, and to an eclectic mix of iconic religious and philosophical sources, credible comparisons with works by Rabelais, Cervantes, Laurence Sterne, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, William Burroughs, Ralph Ellison, Patrick White, and Toni Morrison have also been made. Some commentators have detected similarities with those writers in the Modernist tradition who wrote extremely long novels dealing with large metaphysical or political issues. Examples of such works might include ''Ulysses'' by James Joyce, ''A Passage to India'' by E.M. Forster, ''The Apes of God'' by Wyndham Lewis, ''The Man Without Qualities'' by Robert Musil, or ''The Castle'' by Franz Kafka. In his "Introduction" to ''Slow Learner'', Pynchon explicitly acknowledges his debt to Beat Generation writers, and expresses his admiration for Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' in particular; he also reveals his familiarity with literary works by T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Herbert Gold, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer, and non-fiction works by Helen Waddell, Norbert Wiener and Isaac Asimov. Other contemporary American authors whose fiction is often categorised alongside Pynchon's include John Hawkes, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo, and Joseph McElroy. Younger contemporary writers who have been touted as heirs apparent to Pynchon include David Foster Wallace, William Vollmann, Richard Powers, David Mitchell, Neal Stephenson, Dave Eggers, Christopher Wunderlee, and "Tommaso Pincio" whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.

Investigations and digressions into the realms of human sexuality, psychology, sociology, mathematics, science, and technology recur throughout Pynchon's works. One of his earliest short stories, "Low-lands" (1960), features a meditation on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg Heisenberg's] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/uncertainty_principle uncertainty principle] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, "Entropy" (1960), introduced [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/entropy the concept] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the "shallowness of [his] understanding" of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative around it was "a lousy way to go about writing a story"). Another early story, "Under the Rose" (1961), includes amongst its cast of characters a cyborg set anachronistically in Victorian-era Egypt (a type of writing now called steampunk). This story, significantly reworked by Pynchon, appears as Chapter 3 of ''V.'' "The Secret Integration" (1964), Pynchon's last published short story, is a sensitively-handled coming-of-age tale in which a group of young boys face the consequences of the American policy of racial integration. At one point in the story, the boys attempt to understand the new policy by way of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/antiderivative mathematical operation], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/communication_theory communication theory], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/calculus calculus], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes Zeno's paradoxes], and the thought experiment known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon Maxwell's demon]. At the same time, the novel also investigates homosexuality, celibacy and both medically-sanctioned and illicit psychedelic drug use. ''Gravity's Rainbow'' describes many varieties of sexual fetishism (including sado-masochism, coprophilia and a borderline case of tentacle rape), and features numerous episodes of drug use, most notably marijuana but also cocaine, naturally occurring hallucinogens, and the mushroom ''Amanita muscaria.'' ''Gravity's Rainbow'' also derives much from Pynchon's background in mathematics: at one point, the geometry of garter belts is compared with that of cathedral spires, both described as mathematical singularities. His most recent novel, ''Mason & Dixon'', explores the scientific, theological, and sociocultural foundations of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment Age of Reason] whilst also depicting the relationships between actual historical figures and fictional characters in intricate detail and, like ''Gravity's Rainbow'', is an archetypal example of the genre of historiographical metafiction.

Pynchon's work has been cited as an influence and inspiration by many writers, musicians, artists and filmmakers, including Laurie Anderson, T. Coraghessan Boyle, David Cronenberg, Don DeLillo, Paul Di Filippo, William Gibson, Max P. Häring, Elfriede Jelinek, Adrian Voyd from [http://www.SexAntToys.com Sex Ant Toys], Rick Moody, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Richard Powers, Adam Rapp, Salman Rushdie, Zak Smith, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling and the Definitive Jux hip-hop producer/CEO/emcee El-P. Thanks to his influence on Gibson and Stephenson in particular, Pynchon became one of the progenitors of cyberpunk fiction. Though the term "cyberpunk" did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, many readers retroactively include ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works—''e.g.,'' Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'' and many works of Philip K. Dick—which seem, after the fact, to anticipate cyberpunk styles and themes. The encyclopedic nature of Pynchon's novels also led to some attempts to link his work with the short-lived [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hypertext_fiction hypertext fiction] movement of the 1990s.<ref>Page 2002; Krämer 2005</ref>

''Gravity's Rainbow'' and the more recent ''Mason & Dixon'' both feature wildly eccentric characters, episodes of frenzied action and frequent digressions on topics which are seemingly tangential to the central narrative. These characteristics, combined with the novels' imposing lengths, have led critic James Wood to classify Pynchon's work as hysterical realism. Other writers whose work has been labelled as hysterical realism include Rushdie, Stephenson, Wunderlee and Zadie Smith.

==Media scrutiny==
Relatively little is known about Thomas Pynchon as a private person; he has had few known contacts with journalists for more than forty years. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed.

A review of ''V.'' in the ''New York Times Book Review'' described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label which has pursued Pynchon throughout his career.<ref>Plimpton 1963: 5</ref> Nonetheless, Pynchon's absence from the public spotlight is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes.

===1970s and 1980s===
After the publication and success of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', interest mounted in finding out more about the identity of the author. At the 1974 National Book Award ceremony, the president of Viking Press, Tom Guinzberg, arranged for double-talking comedian [http://www.irwincorey.com/ "Professor" Irwin Corey] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.<ref name="royster2005"/> Many of the assembled guests had no idea who Corey was, and, having never seen the author, they assumed that it was Pynchon himself on the stage delivering Corey's trademark torrent of rambling, pseudo-scholarly verbiage.<ref>Corey 1974</ref> Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.

An article published in the ''Soho Weekly News'' claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger.<ref>Batchelor 1976</ref> Pynchon's written response to this theory was simple: "Not bad. Keep trying."<ref> Reported in Tanner 1982</ref>

Thereafter, the first piece to provide substantial information about Pynchon's personal life was a biographical account written by a former Cornell University friend, Jules Siegel, and published in ''Playboy'' magazine. In his article, Siegel reveals that Pynchon had a [[complex (psychology)|complex]] about his teeth and underwent extensive and painful reconstructive surgery, was nicknamed "Tom" at Cornell and attended Mass diligently, acted as best man at Siegel's wedding, and that he later also had an affair with Siegel's wife. Siegel recalls Pynchon saying he did attend some of Vladimir Nabokov's lectures at Cornell but that he could hardly make out what Nabokov was saying because of his thick Russian accent. Siegel also records Pynchon's comment that "[e]very weirdo in the world is on my wavelength",<ref>Siegel 1977</ref> an observation borne out by the crankiness and zealotry which has attached itself to his name and work in subsequent years, particularly across the Internet.

===1990s===
Pynchon's avoidance of celebrity and public appearances caused journalists to continue to speculate about his identity and activities, and reinforced his reputation within the media as "reclusive". More astute readers and critics recognized that there were and are perhaps aesthetic (and ideological) motivations behind his choice to remain aloof from public life. For example, the protagonist in Janette Turner Hospital's short story, "For Mr. Voss or Occupant" (1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing
:a study of authors who become reclusive. Patrick White, Emily Dickinson, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon. The way they create solitary characters and personae and then disappear into their fictions.<ref>Hospital 1995: 361-2</ref>
More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that
:the man simply chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and Paris Hilton were ever to meet—the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining—the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.<ref>Salm 2004</ref>

Belying this reputation somewhat, Pynchon has published a number of articles and reviews in the mainstream American media, including words of support for Salman Rushdie and his then-wife, Marianne Wiggins, after the fatwa was pronounced against Rushdie by the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.<ref>Pynchon 1989</ref> In the following year, Rushdie's enthusiastic review of Pynchon's ''Vineland'' prompted Pynchon to send him another message hinting that if Rushdie were ever in New York, the two should arrange a meeting. Eventually, the two did meet, and Rushdie found himself surprised by how much Pynchon resembled the mental image Rushdie had formed beforehand.<ref>Hitchens 1997</ref>

In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson — a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt — and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991. The disclosure of Pynchon's location in New York, after many years in which he was believed to be dividing his time between Mexico and northern California, led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down. Shortly before the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'' in 1997, a CNN camera crew filmed him in Manhattan. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he rang CNN asking that he not be identified in the footage of the street scenes near his home. When asked about his reclusive nature, he remarked, "My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'." CNN also quoted him as saying, "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed."<ref>CNN 1997</ref> The next year, a reporter for the ''Sunday Times'' managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.<ref>Bone 1998</ref>

After several references to Pynchon's work and reputation were made on NBC's ''The John Larroquette Show,'' Pynchon (through his agent) reportedly contacted the show's producers to offer suggestions and corrections. When a local Pynchon sighting became a major plot point in a 1994 episode of the show, Pynchon was sent the script for his approval; as well as providing the title of a fictitious work to be used in one episode ("Pandemonium of the Sun"), the novelist apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from shot.<ref>CNN 1997; Glenn 2003</ref> Also during the 1990s, Pynchon apparently befriended members of the band Lotion and attended a number of their shows, culminating in the liner notes he contributed for the band's 1995 album ''Nobody's Cool''. The novelist then conducted an interview with the band ("Lunch With Lotion") for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason & Dixon''. More recently, Pynchon provided faxed answers to questions submitted by author David Hajdu and permitted excerpts from his personal correspondence to be quoted in Hajdu's 2001 book, ''Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña.''<ref>Warner 2001</ref>

Pynchon's attempt to maintain his personal privacy and have his work speak for itself has resulted in a number of outlandish rumors and hoaxes over the years. Indeed, claims that Pynchon was the Unabomber or a sympathizer with the Waco Branch Davidians after the 1993 siege were upstaged in the mid-1990s by the invention of an elaborate rumor insinuating that Pynchon and one "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Tinasky Wanda Tinasky]" were the same person. A spate of letters authored under that name had appeared in the late 1980s in the ''Anderson Valley Advertiser'' in Anderson Valley, California. The style and content of those letters were said to resemble Pynchon's, and Pynchon's ''Vineland'', published in 1990, also takes place in northern California, so it was suggested that Pynchon may have been in the area at that time, conducting research. A collection of the Tinasky letters was eventually published as a paperback book in 1996; however, Pynchon himself denied having written the letters, and no direct attribution of the letters to Pynchon was ever made. "Literary detective" Donald Foster subsequently showed that the ''Letters'' were in fact written by an obscure Beat writer called Tom Hawkins, who had murdered his wife and then committed suicide in 1988. Foster's evidence was conclusive, including finding the typewriter on which the "Tinasky" letters had been written.<ref>Foster 2000</ref>

In 1998, over 120 letters that Pynchon had written to his longtime agent, Candida Donadio, were donated by the family of private collector, Carter Burden, to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. The letters ranged from 1963 to 1982, thus covering some of the author's most creative and prolific years. Although the Morgan Library originally intended to allow scholars to view the letters, at Pynchon’s request, the Burden family and
Morgan Library agreed to seal these letters until after Pynchon's death.

===2000s===

After 9/11, a supposed "interview" with Pynchon was published in an issue of ''Playboy'' Japan, entitled "Most News is Propaganda. Bin Laden May Not Exist." It purported to be a talk with Pynchon on the events of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. Its authenticity is uncertain. [[Pynchon_playboy|Rough translation of the Pynchon "interview"]].


Responding ironically to the image which has been manufactured in the media over the years, during 2004, Pynchon made two cameo appearances on the animated television series ''The Simpsons''. The first occurs in the episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", in which Marge Simpson becomes a novelist. He plays himself, with a paper bag over his head, and provides a blurb for the back cover of Marge's book, speaking in a broad Long Island accent: "Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!" He then starts yelling at passing cars: "Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But, wait! There's more!" The second appearance occurs in "All's Fair in Oven War," which was the sixteenth-season premiere. In this appearance, Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of puns on his novel titles ("These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'."). Pynchon makes a third, non-speaking cameo, when he is seen at the fictional WordLoaf convention in the 18th season (2006) episode, "Moe'N'a Lisa." The episode first aired on November 19, 2006, the Sunday before Pynchon's sixth novel, ''Against the Day'', was released, perhaps as part of an increasingly unusual publicity campaign.

In July of 2006, Amazon.com created a page showing an upcoming 992-page, untitled, Thomas Pynchon novel. A description of the soon-to-be published novel appeared on Amazon purporting to be written by Pynchon himself. The description was soon taken down, prompting speculation over its authenticity, but the blurb was soon back up along with the title of Pynchon's new novel, ''Against the Day''.

Shortly before ''Against the Day'' was published, Pynchon's prose appeared in the program for "The Daily Show: Ten Fu@#ing Years (The Concert)", a retrospective on Jon Stewart's comedy-news broadcast ''The Daily Show.''<ref>Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_dailyshow.html "The Evolution of ''The Daily Show''"]. Printed in program notes (16 November 2006).</ref> Only weeks later, Pynchon sent a one-page, typewritten letter to ''The Daily Telegraph,'' defending fellow writer Ian McEwan against plagiarism charges. (McEwan had been accused of copying details from the late Lucilla Andrews's autobiography, ''No Time for Romance.'') His sentiment echoes thoughts on literary theft expressed over two decades earlier in the ''Slow Learner'' introduction; the letter concludes,
:Memoirs of the Blitz have borne indispensable witness, and helped later generations know something of the tragedy and heroism of those days. For Mr. McEwan to have put details from one of them to further creative use, acknowledging this openly and often, and then explaining it clearly and honorably, surely merits not our scolding, but our gratitude.<ref>Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_mcewan.html "Words for Ian McEwan"] (6 December 2006)</ref>

==Works==
* ''[[V.]]'' (1963), winner of [[William Faulkner Foundation]] Award
* ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), winner of Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award
* ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), 1974 [[National Book Award]] for fiction, judges' unanimous selection for [[Pulitzer Prize]] overruled by advisory board, awarded William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1975 (award declined)
* ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of early short stories
* ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)
* ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' (1997)
* ''[[Against the Day]]'' (21 November, 2006)

As well as fictional works, Pynchon has written essays, introductions, and reviews addressing subjects as diverse as missile security, the Watts Riots, Luddism and the work of Donald Barthelme. Some of his non-fiction pieces have appeared in the ''New York Times Book Review'' and ''The New York Review of Books'', and he has contributed blurbs for books and records. His 1984 Introduction to the ''Slow Learner'' collection of early stories is significant for its autobiographical candor. He has written introductions to at least two books, including the 1992 collection of Donald Barthelme's stories, ''The Teachings of Don B.'' and, more recently, the Penguin Centenary Edition of George Orwell's novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' which was published in 2003.

==External Links==
* [http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon Uncyclopedia's Pynchon Bio]

==Notes and references==

:''This article was originally based on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia] page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon Thomas Pynchon], accessed 30 November 2006, last modified [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&oldid=91019157 23:00 UTC, 29 November 2006]. Principal authors of that page include Wikipedia users Abaca, Anville, Nixdorf and Zafiroblue05. Used under the terms of the [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html GNU FDL 1.2.]''

<references/>

* Batchelor, J.C. "Thomas Pynchon is not Thomas Pynchon, or, This is End of the Plot Which Has No Name". ''Soho Weekly News'', 22 April 1976.
* Bone, James. [http://www.suntimes.co.za:80/1998/06/07/lifestyle/life01.htm "Who the hell is he?]" ''Sunday Times'' (South Africa), 7 June 1998.
* CNN. "[http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ Where's Thomas Pynchon?]" 5 June 1997.
* CNN Book News. "[http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html Early Nobel announcement prompts speculation]". 29 September 1999.
* Corey, Irwin. "[http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html Transcript of National Book Award acceptance speech]", delivered 18 April 1974.
* Ervin, Andrew. "[http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml Nobel Oblige]". ''Philadelphia City Paper'' 14–21 September 2000.
* Foster, Don. ''Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous''. Henry Holt, New York, 2000.
* Fowler, Douglas. ''A Reader's Guide to [[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Ardis Press, 1980.
* Frost, Garrison. "[http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]". ''The Aesthetic'', 2003.
* Getlin, Josh. "[http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-quick22.3jun22,0,5673134.story?coll=cl-calendar Pynchon Novel Out in December]". ''LA Times'', 22 June 2006.
* Glenn, Joshua. "[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/ Pynchon and Homer]". ''Boston Globe'', 19 October 2003.
* Gordon, Andrew. "[http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir]".
* Grimes, William. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html "Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner Of Nobel Prize in Literature"]. ''New York Times Book Review'', 8 October 1993.
* Gussow, Mel. ''Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask.'' ''New York Times,'' 4 March 1998.
* Hitchens, Christopher. "[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n10_v61/ai_19841067 Salman Rushdie: Even this colossal threat did not work. Life goes on.]" ''The Progressive'', October 1997.
* Hospital, Janette Turner. ''Collected Stories 1970-1995''. University of Queensland Press, 1995.
* Italie, Hillel. "[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_en_ot/books_thomas_pynchon_1 New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way]" ''Associated Press'', 20 July 2006.
* Kihss, Peter. "Pulitzer Jurors; His Third Novel". ''The New York Times'', 8 May 1974, p. 38.
* Krämer, Oliver. "[http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=PagEd&file=index&topic_id=40&page_id=208 Interview mit John M. Krafft, Herausgeber der 'Pynchon Notes']". ''Sic et Non.''
* McLemee, Scott. ''[http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/15/mclemee You Hide, They Seek]'' ''Inside Higher Ed'', 15 November 2006.
* ''New York Review of Books''. "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" (advertisement). Vol. 10, No. 3, 15 February 1968, p. 9.
* Page, Adrian. "Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction". In ''The Question of Literature: The Place on the Literary in Contemporary Theory'', edited by Elizabeth B Bissell. Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-71905-744-2.
* Patterson, Troy (a). "[http://www.slate.com/id/2146152 Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?]" ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.
* Patterson, Troy (b). "[http://www.slate.com/id/2146272 Mystery solved]" ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.
* Plimpton, George. "Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer". Rev. of ''V.'' ''New York Times Book Review'', 21 April 1963, p. 5.
* Pynchon, Thomas. "[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html A Journey into the Mind of Watts]". ''New York Times Magazine'', 12 June 1966, pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84.
* Pynchon, Thomas. "[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_rushdie.html Words for Salman Rushdie]". ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', 12 March 1989, p. 29.
* Pynchon, Thomas. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/ Editorial review on ''Untitled Thomas Pynchon''], [[Amazon.com]] 14 July 2006.
* Roeder, Bill. "After the Rainbow". ''Newsweek'' 92, 7 August 1978.
* Royster, Paul. "[http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/2/ Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology]". Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005.
* Salm, Arthur. "A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)". San Diego ''Union-Tribune'', 8 February 2004.
* Siegel, Jules. "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?" ''Playboy'', March 1977.
* Tanner, Tony. ''Thomas Pynchon''. Methuen & Co., 1982.
* Ulin, David. "[http://www.salon.com/april97/media/media970425.html Gravity's End]". ''Salon'', 25 April 1997.
* Warner, Simon. "[http://www.popmatters.com/books/features/010802-hadju.shtml A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hajdu]". ''Pop Matters'', 2 August 2001.
* Weisenburger, Steven C. ''A [[Gravity's Rainbow]] Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel''. University of Georgia Press, 1988.
* Wisnicki, Adrian. "A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered." ''Pynchon Notes'' 46-49 (2000-1), pp. 9-34.

==External links==

:''The following links were last verified on 30 November 2006.''

* [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Official UK publisher's site]
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3673 Literary Encyclopedia biography]
* [http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/research/special_guests/gary_boyd_roberts/48_659_448.asp The Ancestry of Novelist Thomas Pynchon]
* [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ HyperArts Pynchon Pages]
* [http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ Pynchon Index]
* [http://waste.org/pynchon-l The Pynchon-L mailing list]
* ''[http://www2.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes],'' a journal operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio
* [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ pynchonoid.blogspot.com]
* [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/ San Narciso Pynchon Page], hosted in Claremont, California, "a town that looks a lot, in fact, like [[San Narciso]]"
* [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/index.html Spermatikos Logos]

:'''''This page, though not necessarily others in the Pynchon Wiki, is licensed under the terms of the [[Pynchon Wiki:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License|GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.]]'''''
'''Bold text'''

Oxford article comments

2008-06-11T21:31:44Z

Bleakhaus:

'''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086671 Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki].

The present page is set aside for comments and corrections to this article (in other words, a wiki on a paper on a wiki).

=Commentary by Bleakhaus=
My personal thanks to Ralph Schroeder and Matthijs den Besten for their thoughtful and rigorous analysis of Pynchon Wiki and its greater significance in the Wild West of collaborative research.

The following commentary follows a far looser standard than I'd use when contributing to or editing other parts of the Pynchonwiki. I do this to experiment with a more personal form of commentary and see if it produces anything useful. "[[Against_the_Day_description|Let the reader decide, let the reader beware.]]" I use the pagination of the paper at SSRN.

==Page 1==
'''low tech''' 
It's curious that Internet researchers would use this term to describe a literary wiki. Sure, it ain't a particle accelerator, but still the highest-tech solution yet applied to literary collaboration or research.

==Page 3==
'''"The Pynchon Wiki can thus be seen as an example of humanities e-research, though it could equally be seen as an amateur or hobbyist effort or as a community of fans of the author."''' 
It would be interesting to see what kind of wiki annotation emerged if written by an army of an author's enemies, rather than fans like us here. Think of a Republican commentary wiki on Bill Clinton's autobiography, or a Democrat critique of Reagan's.

==Page 4==
'''"whether speed and openness to all contributors have come at the cost of quality."''' 
The entries on Pynchonwiki vary in quality. Most are useful, but there are still too many that are overly long, irrelevant, or completely unfounded theory. After laying the groundwork for the page-by-page section I battled early on with a handful contributors who were taking the commentary away from what we'd find in Weisenberger, for instance with personal commentary, jokes, digressions and comparisons (cf.) which veered too far away from the text at hand. These contributors were and are always free to create a separate area of Pynchonwiki for adding such content, (say, "Bleakhaus's suggested interpretations and comparisons for each page of ''Against the Day''"), but none has yet done so. I believe some of these guys felt slighted by my edits but I believed then and now that the already enormous wiki would have become much longer and less useful if I and others had not steered it into its current form.

==Page 6==
'''"being able to recognize and understand his sources enhances the appreciation of his fiction."''' 
I've come to believe that Pynchon is one of the handful of authors who benefit from such extensive annotation. Pynchonwiki was a success because it was the right tool for the right book at the right time. I have since created a similar site, [http://literarywiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page|Literarywiki.org], which is essentially Pynchonwiki for all other books, but after some months of tinkering I find that few other books benefit from the wiki annotation treatment, even some books with similarly enormous amounts of references (such as ''Foucault's Pendulum'' by Eco, in which the abundance of information is used as a spice and digging up each reference does not necessarily illuminate anything).

==Page 10==
"'''the Wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's half-baked opinions and Kinbote-esque commentary"''' 
Thankfully this did not occur once the general ground rules were established early on, not so much by fiat or even agreement as much as the example of existing entries. Although I'm proud of what we accomplished, part of me wishes that parts of the wiki had gotten a bit more wild and wooly :)

==Page==
'''"Finally, the fact that the pages ‘Against the Day Title’ and ‘The Sexual Angle’ receive more edits than ‘Thomas Pynchon’ is a sign that the contributors to ‘Against the Day’ are less concerned with the author himself but are more interested in the book itself."''' 
Not necessarily true. The [[Thomas Pynchon]] entry as been edited only a little because it was copied whole from Wikipedia and there's not much to add.

Oxford article comments

2008-06-11T21:19:00Z

Bleakhaus:

'''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086671 Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki].

The present page is set aside for comments and corrections to this article (in other words, a wiki on a paper on a wiki).

=Commentary by Bleakhaus=
My personal thanks to Ralph Schroeder and Matthijs den Besten for their thoughtful and rigorous analysis of Pynchon Wiki and its greater significance in the Wild West of collaborative research.

The following commentary follows a far looser standard than I'd use when contributing to or editing other parts of the Pynchonwiki. I do this to experiment with a more personal form of commentary and see if it produces anything useful. "[[Against_the_Day_description|Let the reader decide, let the reader beware.]]" I use the pagination of the paper at SSRN.

==Page 1==
'''low tech''' 
It's curious that Internet researchers would use this term to describe a literary wiki. Sure, it ain't a particle accelerator, but still the highest-tech solution yet applied to literary collaboration or research.

==Page 3==
'''"The Pynchon Wiki can thus be seen as an example of humanities e-research, though it could equally be seen as an amateur or hobbyist effort or as a community of fans of the author."''' 
It would be interesting to see what kind of wiki annotation emerged if written by an army of an author's enemies, rather than fans like us here. Think of a Republican commentary wiki on Bill Clinton's autobiography, or a Democrat critique of Reagan's.

==Page 4==
'''"whether speed and openness to all contributors have come at the cost of quality."''' 
The entries on Pynchonwiki vary in quality. Most are useful, but there are still too many that are overly long, irrelevant, or completely unfounded theory. After laying the groundwork for the page-by-page section I battled early on with a handful contributors who were taking the commentary away from what we'd find in Weisenberger, for instance with personal commentary, jokes, digressions and comparisons (cf.) which veered too far away from the text at hand. These contributors were and are always free to create a separate area of Pynchonwiki for adding such content, (say, "Bleakhaus's suggested interpretations and comparisons for each page of ''Against the Day''"), but none has yet done so. I believe some of these guys felt slighted by my edits but I believed then and now that the already enormous wiki would have become much longer and less useful if I and others had not steered it into its current form.

==Page 6==
'''"being able to recognize and understand his sources enhances the appreciation of his fiction."''' 
I've come to believe that Pynchon is one of the handful of authors who benefit from such extensive annotation. Pynchonwiki was a success because it was the right tool for the right book at the right time. I have since created a similar site, [http://literarywiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page|Literarywiki.org], which is essentially Pynchonwiki for all other books, but after some months of tinkering I find that few other books benefit from the wiki annotation treatment, even some books with similarly enormous amounts of references (such as ''Foucault's Pendulum'' by Eco, in which the abundance of information is used as a spice and digging up each reference does not necessarily illuminate anything).

==Page 10==
"'''the Wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's half-baked opinions and Kinbote-esque commentary"''' 
Thankfully this did not occur once the general ground rules were established early on, not so much by fiat or even agreement as much as the example of existing entries. Although I'm proud of what we accomplished, part of me wishes that parts of the wiki had gotten a bit more wild and wooly :)

==Page==
'''"Finally, the fact that the pages ‘Against the Day Title’ and ‘The Sexual Angle’ receive more edits than ‘Thomas Pynchon’ is a sign that the contributors to ‘Against the Day’ are less concerned with the author himself but are
more interested in the book itself."''' 
Not necessarily true. The [[Thomas Pynchon]] entry as been edited only a little because it was copied whole from Wikipedia and there's not much to add.

Oxford article comments

2008-06-11T21:03:38Z

Bleakhaus:

Oxford article comments

2008-06-11T20:44:46Z

Bleakhaus:

'''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086671 Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki].

The present page is set aside for comments and corrections to this article (in other words, a wiki on a paper on a wiki).

=Commentary by Bleakhaus=
My personal thanks to Ralph Schroeder and Matthijs den Besten for their thoughtful and rigorous analysis of Pynchon Wiki and its greater significance in the Wild West of collaborative research.

The following commentary follows a far looser standard than I'd use when contributing to or editing other parts of the Pynchonwiki to experiment with a more personal form of commentary and see if it produces anything useful. "[[Against_the_Day_description|Let the reader decide, let the reader beware.]]" I use the pagination of the paper at SSRN.

==Page 1==
'''low tech''' 
It's curious that Internet researchers would use this term to describe a literary wiki. Sure, it ain't a particle accelerator, but the highest-tech solution yet applied to literary collaboration or research.

==Page 3==
'''"The Pynchon Wiki can thus be seen as an example of humanities e-research, though it could equally be seen as an amateur or hobbyist effort or as a community of fans of the author."''' 
It would be interesting to see what kind of wiki annotation emerged if written by an army of an author's enemies, rather than fans like us here. Think of a Republican commentary wiki on Bill Clinton's autobiography, or obviously a Democrat critique of Reagan's.

==Page 4==
'''"whether speed and openness to all contributors have come at the cost of quality."''' 
The entries on Pynchon wiki vary in quality. Most are useful, but there are still too many that are completely unfounded theory, overly long or irrelevant. After laying the groundwork for the page-by-page section I battled early on with a handful contributors who were taking the commentary away from what we'd find in Weisenberger, for instance with personal commentary, jokes, digressions and comparisons (cf.) which veered too far away from the text at hand. These contributors were and are always free to create a separate area of Pynchonwiki for adding such content, (say, "Bleakhaus's suggested interpretations and comparisons for each page of ''Against the Day''"), but none has yet done so. I believe some of these guys felt slighted by my edits but I believe the already enormous wiki would have become much longer and less useful if I and others had not steered it into its current form.

==Page 6==
'''"being able to recognize and understand his sources enhances the appreciation of his fiction."''' 
Pynchonwiki was a success because it was the right tool for the right book at the right time. I have since created a similar site, [http://literarywiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page|Literarywiki.org], which is essentially Pynchonwiki for all other books, but after some months of tinkering I find that few other books benefit from the wiki annotation treatment, even some books with similarly enormous amounts of references (such as ''Foucault's Pendulum'' by Eco, in which the abundance of information is used as a spice and digging up each reference does not necessarily illuminate anything).

Oxford article comments

2008-05-14T21:40:34Z

Bleakhaus:

Oxford article comments

2008-05-14T21:23:08Z

Bleakhaus: New page: '''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn...

Main Page

2008-05-14T21:13:29Z

Bleakhaus:

[[Image:Campanile-v2.jpg|250px|thumb|right]]<big>'''Welcome to the ''Against the Day'' Wiki'''</big>

To become a contributor/editor, [http://pynchonwiki.com/mycaptcha/captcha-page.php '''Create an account.''']

:[http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAgainst-Day-Thomas-Pynchon%2Fdp%2F159420120X%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1164267006%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&tag=hyperartspynchon&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325'''Order ''Against the Day''''']
:[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143112562?ie=UTF8&tag=hyperartspynchon&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0143112562 Order the USA paperback]

:[http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&from=R10&_trksid=m37&satitle=against+the+day+-speak+-cronin+-chtorr+-yeats&sacat=267%26catref%3DC6&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=94610&sabfmts=1&saobfmts=insif&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search Buy it used on eBay]

<div style="border:1px solid #6f463a; background:#f6efe8; width:320px; padding:8px; margin:0;">
'''''Paperback Pagination''' 
The UK paperback edition of ''Against the Day'' has a markedly different pagination from the original hardback editions it is 1220 pages, up from the original 1085 pages. The American paperback retains the original pagination. '''As all page references in this wiki are to the original edition, the UK paperback presents a challenge.'''

[[Pagination Blues|''Read more on the pagination and how to deal...'']]

'''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086671 Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki]. Feel free to add [[Oxford article comments | comments and corrections]].

'''Cricket anyone?''' Excellent article by Peter Vernon on cricket as metaphor in ''Against the Day'' [[Cricket in Against the Day|Read it...]]</div>

This is the Wiki for [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''Against the Day''.
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]], [[Against the Day Title|entertain some theories on the source of the title]], or check out the [[Errata]].

==How to Use this Wiki==

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.

Apart from those, it's up to you! In addition to your own research, feel free to add relevant information or interpetations gleaned from other ''Against the Day'' online discussions such as the [http://www.waste.org/pynchon-l/ Pynchon-L] mailing list, [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/ The Chumps of Choice] blog, [http://www.sporadikos-logos.org/against-the-day/ Against the Day blog], and others-- with proper attribution, of course.

==Alphabetical Index==
Information on the characters, events, and everything else in ''Against the Day'', organized alphabetically:{{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}

 

==Spoiler-free Annotations by Page==
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.
{{ATD PbP}}

== Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines==

[[Help:Contents|'''Click here for help with editing and creating pages.''']]

We have a few conventions we ask that you follow:

* 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.

* 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 <code><nowiki>[[Category:ATD]]</nowiki></code>.

* To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, create one using the [[T|entry on Peter Tait]] as an example. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg <nowiki>[[Name Discussion|DISCUSSION]]</nowiki>) and notice that the visible name will be "DISCUSSION" in full caps, so it stands out a bit.

* [[Help:Contents|More help for this wiki available here.]]

==External Links==

* [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Random House UK ATD Page]
* [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ ThomasPynchon.com]
* [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/ The Modern Word Pynchon page]
: [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/countingdown.html The Modern Word: counting down to ATD]
: [http://z11.invisionfree.com/thefictionalwoods/index.php The Fictional Woods] - a Pynchon forum
* [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ Pynchonoid Blog]
* [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/ ATD Blog]
* [http://researchmethodsprowrite.blogspot.com/ Another ATD Blog]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Day Wikipedia ATD page]
* [http://www.emanating.com/wordpress/ Emanating Against the Day]'''
* [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica]
* [http://www.vheissu.info/atdtda/monte-toc.php Extended ToC for ''Against the Day'']
* [http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/article/7889/the-fuss-about-pynchon/ The Fuss About Pynchon] - Great article by John Carvill in [http://www.popmatters.com/ PopMatters] about Pynchon's work.

==Featured Article==
[[Image:Lord_Hawke.jpg|150px|thumb|left]]

'''It’s Just Not Cricket: Cricket as Metaphor in Thomas Pynchon’s ''Against the Day''''' 

Peter Vernon presented this insightful paper at the Conference on ''Against the Day'' held in Tours, France, in June 2007, elucidating one of ''Against the Day'''s myriad vectors of meaning.
:"It is for two main reasons, I believe, that Pynchon uses the game of cricket as a metaphor in ''Against the Day''. First, because cricket is the Imperial game, a game exported by the British to its colonies. And, second, because cricket is a game of balance, doubles and mirror images. The off-break is exactly balanced by the leg-break; the googly by the doosra. Cricket operates in terms of mirror-images and can be seen, therefore, to connect, on a metaphorical level, with the themes of Double Refraction, the Michelson-Morley Experiment, Iceland Spar, the Zombinis and the Isle of Mirrors in Venice." ([[Cricket in Against the Day | Read on...]])
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

==Image Gallery==
Below are some of the images you will find on the ''Against the Day'' Wiki. {{Special:Newimages}}

Main Page

2008-05-14T21:11:22Z

Bleakhaus:

[[Image:Campanile-v2.jpg|250px|thumb|right]]<big>'''Welcome to the ''Against the Day'' Wiki'''</big>

To become a contributor/editor, [http://pynchonwiki.com/mycaptcha/captcha-page.php '''Create an account.''']

:[http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAgainst-Day-Thomas-Pynchon%2Fdp%2F159420120X%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1164267006%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&tag=hyperartspynchon&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325'''Order ''Against the Day''''']
:[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143112562?ie=UTF8&tag=hyperartspynchon&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0143112562 Order the USA paperback]

:[http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&from=R10&_trksid=m37&satitle=against+the+day+-speak+-cronin+-chtorr+-yeats&sacat=267%26catref%3DC6&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=94610&sabfmts=1&saobfmts=insif&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search Buy it used on eBay]

<div style="border:1px solid #6f463a; background:#f6efe8; width:320px; padding:8px; margin:0;">
'''''Paperback Pagination''' 
The UK paperback edition of ''Against the Day'' has a markedly different pagination from the original hardback editions it is 1220 pages, up from the original 1085 pages. The American paperback retains the original pagination. '''As all page references in this wiki are to the original edition, the UK paperback presents a challenge.'''

[[Pagination Blues|''Read more on the pagination and how to deal...'']]

'''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086671 Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki]. Feel free to add [[comments and corrections]].

'''Cricket anyone?''' Excellent article by Peter Vernon on cricket as metaphor in ''Against the Day'' [[Cricket in Against the Day|Read it...]]</div>

This is the Wiki for [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''Against the Day''.
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]], [[Against the Day Title|entertain some theories on the source of the title]], or check out the [[Errata]].

==How to Use this Wiki==

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.

Apart from those, it's up to you! In addition to your own research, feel free to add relevant information or interpetations gleaned from other ''Against the Day'' online discussions such as the [http://www.waste.org/pynchon-l/ Pynchon-L] mailing list, [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/ The Chumps of Choice] blog, [http://www.sporadikos-logos.org/against-the-day/ Against the Day blog], and others-- with proper attribution, of course.

==Alphabetical Index==
Information on the characters, events, and everything else in ''Against the Day'', organized alphabetically:{{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}

 

==Spoiler-free Annotations by Page==
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.
{{ATD PbP}}

== Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines==

[[Help:Contents|'''Click here for help with editing and creating pages.''']]

We have a few conventions we ask that you follow:

* 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.

* 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 <code><nowiki>[[Category:ATD]]</nowiki></code>.

* To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, create one using the [[T|entry on Peter Tait]] as an example. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg <nowiki>[[Name Discussion|DISCUSSION]]</nowiki>) and notice that the visible name will be "DISCUSSION" in full caps, so it stands out a bit.

* [[Help:Contents|More help for this wiki available here.]]

==External Links==

* [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Random House UK ATD Page]
* [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ ThomasPynchon.com]
* [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/ The Modern Word Pynchon page]
: [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/countingdown.html The Modern Word: counting down to ATD]
: [http://z11.invisionfree.com/thefictionalwoods/index.php The Fictional Woods] - a Pynchon forum
* [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ Pynchonoid Blog]
* [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/ ATD Blog]
* [http://researchmethodsprowrite.blogspot.com/ Another ATD Blog]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Day Wikipedia ATD page]
* [http://www.emanating.com/wordpress/ Emanating Against the Day]'''
* [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica]
* [http://www.vheissu.info/atdtda/monte-toc.php Extended ToC for ''Against the Day'']
* [http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/article/7889/the-fuss-about-pynchon/ The Fuss About Pynchon] - Great article by John Carvill in [http://www.popmatters.com/ PopMatters] about Pynchon's work.

==Featured Article==
[[Image:Lord_Hawke.jpg|150px|thumb|left]]

'''It’s Just Not Cricket: Cricket as Metaphor in Thomas Pynchon’s ''Against the Day''''' 

Peter Vernon presented this insightful paper at the Conference on ''Against the Day'' held in Tours, France, in June 2007, elucidating one of ''Against the Day'''s myriad vectors of meaning.
:"It is for two main reasons, I believe, that Pynchon uses the game of cricket as a metaphor in ''Against the Day''. First, because cricket is the Imperial game, a game exported by the British to its colonies. And, second, because cricket is a game of balance, doubles and mirror images. The off-break is exactly balanced by the leg-break; the googly by the doosra. Cricket operates in terms of mirror-images and can be seen, therefore, to connect, on a metaphorical level, with the themes of Double Refraction, the Michelson-Morley Experiment, Iceland Spar, the Zombinis and the Isle of Mirrors in Venice." ([[Cricket in Against the Day | Read on...]])
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

==Image Gallery==
Below are some of the images you will find on the ''Against the Day'' Wiki. {{Special:Newimages}}

Main Page

2008-04-09T22:29:52Z

Bleakhaus:

[[Image:Campanile-v2.jpg|250px|thumb|right]]<big>'''Welcome to the ''Against the Day'' Wiki'''</big>

To become a contributor/editor, [http://pynchonwiki.com/mycaptcha/captcha-page.php '''Create an account.''']

:[http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAgainst-Day-Thomas-Pynchon%2Fdp%2F159420120X%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1164267006%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&tag=hyperartspynchon&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325'''Order ''Against the Day''''']
:[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143112562?ie=UTF8&tag=hyperartspynchon&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0143112562 Order the USA paperback]

:[http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&from=R10&_trksid=m37&satitle=against+the+day+-speak+-cronin+-chtorr+-yeats&sacat=267%26catref%3DC6&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=94610&sabfmts=1&saobfmts=insif&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search Buy it used on eBay]

<div style="border:1px solid #6f463a; background:#f6efe8; width:320px; padding:8px; margin:0;">
'''''Paperback Pagination''' 
The UK paperback edition of ''Against the Day'' has a markedly different pagination from the original hardback editions it is 1220 pages, up from the original 1085 pages. The American paperback retains the original pagination. '''As all page references in this wiki are to the original edition, the UK paperback presents a challenge.'''

[[Pagination Blues|''Read more on the pagination and how to deal...'']]

'''Pynchon Wiki Analyzed''' A couple of scholars at Oxford's Internet Institute and e-Research Centre have published an interesting paper on us and this project: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086671 Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki]

'''Cricket anyone?''' Excellent article by Peter Vernon on cricket as metaphor in ''Against the Day'' [[Cricket in Against the Day|Read it...]]</div>

This is the Wiki for [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''Against the Day''.
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]], [[Against the Day Title|entertain some theories on the source of the title]], or check out the [[Errata]].

==How to Use this Wiki==

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.

Apart from those, it's up to you! In addition to your own research, feel free to add relevant information or interpetations gleaned from other ''Against the Day'' online discussions such as the [http://www.waste.org/pynchon-l/ Pynchon-L] mailing list, [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/ The Chumps of Choice] blog, [http://www.sporadikos-logos.org/against-the-day/ Against the Day blog], and others-- with proper attribution, of course.

==Alphabetical Index==
Information on the characters, events, and everything else in ''Against the Day'', organized alphabetically:{{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}

 

==Spoiler-free Annotations by Page==
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.
{{ATD PbP}}

== Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines==

[[Help:Contents|'''Click here for help with editing and creating pages.''']]

We have a few conventions we ask that you follow:

* 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.

* 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 <code><nowiki>[[Category:ATD]]</nowiki></code>.

* To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, create one using the [[T|entry on Peter Tait]] as an example. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg <nowiki>[[Name Discussion|DISCUSSION]]</nowiki>) and notice that the visible name will be "DISCUSSION" in full caps, so it stands out a bit.

* [[Help:Contents|More help for this wiki available here.]]

==External Links==

* [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Random House UK ATD Page]
* [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ ThomasPynchon.com]
* [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/ The Modern Word Pynchon page]
: [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/countingdown.html The Modern Word: counting down to ATD]
: [http://z11.invisionfree.com/thefictionalwoods/index.php The Fictional Woods] - a Pynchon forum
* [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ Pynchonoid Blog]
* [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/ ATD Blog]
* [http://researchmethodsprowrite.blogspot.com/ Another ATD Blog]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Day Wikipedia ATD page]
* [http://www.emanating.com/wordpress/ Emanating Against the Day]'''
* [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica]
* [http://www.vheissu.info/atdtda/monte-toc.php Extended ToC for ''Against the Day'']
* [http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/article/7889/the-fuss-about-pynchon/ The Fuss About Pynchon] - Great article by John Carvill in [http://www.popmatters.com/ PopMatters] about Pynchon's work.

==Featured Article==
[[Image:Lord_Hawke.jpg|150px|thumb|left]]

'''It’s Just Not Cricket: Cricket as Metaphor in Thomas Pynchon’s ''Against the Day''''' 

Peter Vernon presented this insightful paper at the Conference on ''Against the Day'' held in Tours, France, in June 2007, elucidating one of ''Against the Day'''s myriad vectors of meaning.
:"It is for two main reasons, I believe, that Pynchon uses the game of cricket as a metaphor in ''Against the Day''. First, because cricket is the Imperial game, a game exported by the British to its colonies. And, second, because cricket is a game of balance, doubles and mirror images. The off-break is exactly balanced by the leg-break; the googly by the doosra. Cricket operates in terms of mirror-images and can be seen, therefore, to connect, on a metaphorical level, with the themes of Double Refraction, the Michelson-Morley Experiment, Iceland Spar, the Zombinis and the Isle of Mirrors in Venice." ([[Cricket in Against the Day | Read on...]])
<div style="clear:both;"></div>

==Image Gallery==
Below are some of the images you will find on the ''Against the Day'' Wiki. {{Special:Newimages}}

ATD 26-56

2008-04-09T17:36:37Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 45 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 26==

'''egret plumes''' 
Some species of egrets were threatened with extinction in the 19th century because their plumes (also called ''aigrettes'') were much used in millinery. Problem is, the egrets grew the showy feathers only in breeding season, so that's when they were killed, hence no little egrets (egretlets?).

'''Little Egypt''' 
was the stage name for two popular exotic dancers, Ashea Wabe who danced at the Seeley banquet at the 1893 World's Fair and Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, also performing under the stage name Fatima, appeared at the "Street in Cairo" exhibition on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(dancer) Wikipedia entry] Also a 1961 [[Little_Egypt|song]] by the Coasters.

==Page 27==

'''Bacchanale''' 
From ''Samson et Dalila'', op. 47 (1877) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_and_Delilah_%28opera%29 Wikipedia entry]. Listen to a [http://themodernword.com/wiki/bacchanale.mp3 30 second MP3 sample]

"Bacchanalia" describes not just the music but the dance too, in this context.

'''from here to Timbuctoo''' 
Now known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu Timbuktu,] a standard figure of speech for the other end of Creation.

'''Maxim whirling machines...''' 
This paragraph describes a number of real flying apparati: [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Aero_Oct1893.html This article] from October 1893 describes the Maxim whirling machine and others.

'''ornithurgy''' 
Invented word?

My guess is that it signifies something like bird-works: 
ornith- variant of ornitho; [New Latin orntho-, from Greek, from orns, ornth-, bird;] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ornitho-] 
-urgy [New Latin -rgia, from Greek -ourgi, from -ourgos, working, from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/-urgy]

'''Dally''' 
Merle's relationship with Dally is reminiscent of Ryan and Tatum O'Neal's characters in the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film, "Paper Moon". Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 28==

'''''Imbottigliata!''''' Italian for "bottled".

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
The Lolita motif is common in Pynchon's works. Other Lolitas include Bianca in [[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow.'']

:Dahlia is four or five years old! She is not a Lolita motif here. Lolita was twelve and Humbert was sick.

::Too early in the novel to jump into such conclusions.

'''in Randolph's face a degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic''' 
Randolph "froze" previously, on page 12; evidently this is a trait already established in the ''Chums'' novels.

'''fulminate me if she ain't''' 
What an odd turn of phrase: set me off explosively.

'''this Trouvé-screw unit over here''' 
Gustave Trouvé built advanced machinery from the 1860s to the 1890s; [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Screws_May1892.html his work on airscrews] was pivotal, and he also invented [http://www.electricrecordteam.com/history.htm the outboard motor.] Before Trouvé's design studies, propulsion in the air used sail-rotors like windmills or depended on slightly modified marine propellers.

==Page 29==

'''Midway Plaisance''' 
The big central concourse of the White City. "Plaisance" is an alternative (or Frenchified) spelling of "pleasance," an esthetically appealing spot. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this very good site] on the Columbian Exposition, the Midway Plaisance lent its name to the midways of circuses ever after.

'''a l'étouffée''' 
French, meaning braised. So, braised alligator meat. Braised food, for instance crawfish, is a culinary specialty of New Orleans.

In the New Orleans context, a recipe is pertinent because "braise" doesn't exactly tell the story of this Cajun preparation. The following is drastically abridged from, of all things, the obituary of Joe Daole ("Joe Dale") in the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' April 21, 2007:
:Saute onion, green pepper, celery, parsley and garlic in a great deal of butter. Add peeled and chopped tomatoes and seasonings. Simmer, covered, 5-10 minutes. Make a dark brown roux with oil and flour; add to vegetables. Add seafood stock and bring to a boil. Add peeled shrimp or crawfish tail meat and cook just 2-3 minutes. Serve over rice.

'''Sloane Laboratory''' 
Yale's physics lab built 1882. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_33|page 33]].

'''Professor Gibbs''' 
Josiah Williard Gibbs (1839-1903), American mathematical physicist. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1854 he went to Yale and won prizes for excellence in Latin and mathematics. He undertook research in engineering and received his Ph.D in 1863, the first doctorate in engineering to be conferred in the US. From 1866 to 1869 Gibbs studies in Europe - first in Paris, then in Berlin and finally in Heidelberg. He was professor at Yale from 1871 to 1903. He contributed substantially to the study of thermodynamics, and his most important work, ''On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances'' (1876 and 1878) and his "phase rule" established him as a founder of physical chemistry. Gibbs' work on vector analysis was also of major importance in pure mathematics. Gibbs was one of the greatest American scientists in the 19th century. ([http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Gibbs.html Gibbs].)

'''De Forest''' 
Lee De Forest (1873-1961), American inventor. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and educated at Yale and Chicago. A pioneer of radio, he introduced the grid into the therm-ionic valve, and invented the audion (1907), feedback circuit (1912) and the four-electrode valve. He involved in first news by radio (1916). He also did much early work on sound reproduction and on television. He patented over 300 inventions in wireless telegraphy, radio, telephony, talking pictures, high-speed facsimile transmission, television, radiotherapy, radar, etc. He was called, sometimes, "the father of radio." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest De Forest].)

'''Kimura''' 
He received his Ph.D degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1896. (Dissertation: ''Studies on General Spherical Functions''.) He published a paper ''On the Nabla of Quaternions'' in ''The Annals of Mathermatics'', Vol 10, No. 1/6 (1895-1896). In 1912, he published a paper called ''One-Waveness in Wireless Telegraphy; Pseudo-Impact Excitation'' in ''Physical Review'' of May 1912. (''Nabla'' is an early name for the "del" operator, symbolized by the inverted Greek letter Δ.)

'''Ray Ipsow''' 
In Latin ''re ipso'' means "the thing itself." "To the thing itself" was the motto and rallying cry of the investigational method known as phenomenology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology Wikipedia entry] developed by Edmund Husserl [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl Wikipedia entry]. As the phrase indicates, it is a plea against abstraction--a theme of GR--- and for reality 'itself'.

'''Outer Indianoplace''' 
Derogatory nickname for Indianapolis.

'''down in New Orleans . . . that Khartoum business''' 
Evidently two Chums of Chance books we didn't know about. Perhaps ''The Chums of Chance and the Voodoo Priest'' and ''The Chums of Chance and the Mussulman Hordes.''

'''Khartoum... Mahdi's army''' 
Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. The Mahdi army refered to here was an Islamic group in the 1880s that advocated a return to strict Islamic values and battled with the government of Khartoum and Egyptian armies.More on these convoluted events at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sudan_(1884-1898) Wikipedia entry].

The concept of the Mahdi is far beyond this one historic event, however.
In point of fact, the U.S. is fighting the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army Mahdi Army] in Iraq right now.

==Page 30==

'''contrary wind . . . Oltre Giubba, instead of down at Alex''' 
From Khartoum you fly north by west to Alexandria. That wind was about as contrary as it could be: from Khartoum to Oltre Giuba is south by east. Now called [http://www.jubaland.org/ Jubaland,] Oltre Giuba (just one B, please, this isn't ''Pagliacci'') is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oltre_Giuba the southwesternmost part of Somalia,] across the Juba River from the rest. Not to be confused with Juba province in southern Sudan.
:Oh, and the Oltre Giuba diversion must have taken place before ''Inconvenience'' was fitted with hydrogen steam power, else she could have flown against the wind.

'''railroad watch''' 
High-quality pocket watch. [http://www.pockethorology.org/Railroad/Railroad.htm [pix and info]]

==Page 31==

'''Scarsdale Vibe''' 
Scarsdale NY boasts that it's Westchester County's wealthiest community, so a 'Scarsdale vibe' implies 'stinking of money'. Vibe is another Pynchon baddie whose last name starts with "V", ''e.g.'', Brock Vond in ''Vineland.''

'''"The Juggernaut"''' 
The name of Vibe's private train derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning "Lord of the Universe" one of the many names of Lord Krishna. "Krishna" itself means "black" or "dark" skinned. British colonial "urban" legend had it that Hindus sought to be crushed under the wheels of giant cars in Krishna's "chariot procession" at Puri as a way of gaining salvation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut see the Wikipedia entry.]

Capitalism has often been described as a juggernaut. One of numerous uses:
"Even as leaders of nation states compete for power and prestige, the juggernaut of capitalism diminishes borders, weakens governments and, eventually," ...
http://www.southpacific.arts.unsw.edu.au/resources/resource_nissology.htm - 
:A leading sociologist, Anthony Giddens, is also responsible for the phrase, "the juggernaut of modernity". See this incredibly relevant definition and analysis of this phrase: "The most defining property of modernity, according to Giddens, is '''that we are disembedded from time and space'''. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved, time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, however, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like, even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge. In pre-modern societies, it were the elders who possessed the knowledge: they were definable in time and space. In modern societies we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong: there's always a risk we have to take. Also the technologies which we use, and which transform constraints into means, hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a 'juggernaut': modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut traveling through space." Wikipedia [[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Giddens]]

'''in disguise . . . bodyguards and secretaries . . . ebony stick''' 
Some great disguise!

'''Foley Walker''' 
"Foley walker" is a term used to indicate a sound-effects expert. Also known as a foley artist [http://www.natf.org/wad/foley.htm [cite]]. One of the foley walker's main jobs is to add the sound of footsteps to movies where required, imitating the way the character would walk. So, a kind of 'stand-in'.

Coalhouse Walker is a major character in Doctorow's ''Ragtime'', mentioned earlier as a book set within the same time period.

Probably a stretch: "One of the company's (i.e. Thiel‘s Detective Service Company) first employees was John F. Farley, a former U.S. Cavalry trooper. In 1885, Farley was appointed manager of Thiel's Denver office. Farley was known as the 'King of the Strikebreakers.' In 1895 Farley gave up any pretense of detective work and specialized in strike services, at one point allegedly earning $1 million from a strike in San Francisco. After a decade of strikebreaking, Farley retired—not having lost a single one of the 35 strike actions to which he had supplied personnel. Farley later became Denver's chief of police." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Detective_Service_Company from Wikipedia]. The Denver city election results trial of 1889 invited media focus on corruption ties and payoffs between "Soapy" Smith (Criminal Boss of Denver), the mayor and Farley, the chief of police (see Note 6 in this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapy_Smith Wikipedia entry])

While we're on the subject of Walkers, strike-breaking, tycoons etc., it's worth considering where the Dubya comes from.

Johnnie Walker is the paramount fluid of the usual Foley Walker typos in New York. They all drink Black Label while acting like complete assholes in front of other idiots. Talking about the same shit over and over again with no sense of direction and only speculation about numbers which only exist on paper. One big load of bullshit for the masses. Barren omnipotence, the biggest hoax of capitalism and every major financial entity in America. But in the end, they are the only ones who are granted with High Credit Lines without Obligations or Strict Requirements. They are all the same: boring, heartless, sexually lame robot heads. Scarsdale Vibe needs them to enrich his fat belly of grease.

'''Forty-seventh and Ashland''' 
[...] First, the story [...] about Ashland being named for the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire is an urban legend. Ashland Avenue, first known as Reuben Street, was already developed before the fire and was considered the height of suburban living on the West Side in the 1860s.
[http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/ashland_the_great_fire_and_the_ruins_of_chicago/ [cite]] [...] The spread of movie palaces in the automobile age presaged the spread of commercial buildings from the Loop to the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 1930, Marshall Field & Co. had created smaller versions of its downtown store in Evanston and Oak Park, while neighborhood retailers like Goldblatt's and Wieboldt's were moving downtown. Chicago developed regional shopping districts at 47th and Ashland, 63rd and Halsted, Irving Park and Pulaski, and many other locations. Certain areas catered to specialized industries, such as “Automobile Row” on South Michigan Avenue, or the Maxwell Street Market, an open-air European-style market that resisted every effort at modernization until its destruction in the 1990s. [...]
[http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/316.html [cite]]
[http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/img/crops/478.jpg [photo]]

==Page 32==

'''Second Corinthians''' 
This exchange between Vibe and Ipsow refers specifically to 2 Corinthians 11:19 -- For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
[http://www.kingjamesversionofthebible.com/47-secondcorinthians.html [cite]]

'''Ipsow's response to S. Vibe on lines 21-23( ...in these days need arises directly from criminal acts of the rich)''' can be seen as a direct paraphrase of Ch. 5 of the book of James:
Now listen you rich.. you have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! the wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields cry out against you... you have lived in luxury and fattened yourself in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed innocent men ... James 5

==Page 33==

'''"Old Zip Coon"''' 
"Old Zip Coon" dates from as early as 1834 and is considered the original name for the 19th-century American folk song, 'Turkey in the Straw'. [[Old Zip Coon | lyrics]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw Wikipedia] See also [http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/Amsong59.htm] and [http://www.csufresno.edu:80/folklore/ballads/RJ19258.html]. 
The word "coon" may originate in America as a derogatory name for a Negro, but it was current in England too (therefore not "for an African-American"). For other occurrences of the word, with show business associations in every case, see text and annotations: [[#Page_48|page 48]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424.]]
:In this contributor's boyhood, a brand of chewing tobacco heavily advertised on East Tennessee radio and television used the tune in its jingle, with lyrics close to:
<blockquote>If you like a spicy taste 
Every morning, night and noon, 
Then you're bound to like the taste 
When you chew Red Coon.</blockquote>
:The package at this time portrayed a raccoon, but it's possible a different image had come before.

'''Dr. Tesla''' 
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), American inventor. He was born in Croatia of Serbian parents. He studied at Graz (Austria), Prague and Paris. He discovered (1881) principle of rotating magnetic field, basis of practically all alternating-current (AC) machinery. Between 1882-1884 he was an engineer in Paris (1882-84) and constructed his first induction motor (1883). He emigrated to the United States (1884, naturalized in 1889). Worked for Thmoas Edison (1884-85) but left the Edison Works at Menlo Park (Edison opposed to AC idea) to concentrate on his own inventions, which include improved dynamos, transformers, electric bulbs, wireless communication (1897) and the high-frequency coil which bears his name. (Cf [[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Tesla].)

<div id="rewrite">'''violate . . . the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be''' 
Notice what he ''doesn't'' say: the principles of the free market, the essence of the capitalist economic system. As if modern history has already been written and such research would somehow undermine it.</div>

'''Sloane Lab''' 
Completed in 1912, was the gift of Henry T. Sloane, BA 1866, and William D. Sloane, MA HON. 1889. Of Longmeadow stone, it is Collegiate Gothic in style. Charles C. Haight was the architect. (An underground addition was constructed in 1958 to house a Van de Graaff machine-now removed. The John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc., and the U.S. Public Health Service financed it. Sloane Lab was the first University constructed on the Hillhouse Estate (less the three acres adjoining Sachem’s Wood). The property was a gift in 1910 of Mrs. Russell Sage, and called Pierson Sage Square. The University had wanted to acquire the land to develop into a turn-of-the-century “science park”. The well-known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead advised in the land’s development. [217 Prospect Street]
[http://www.facilities.yale.edu/campus/Building1.asp?lstBldg=1075 [cite]] and [http://www.facilities.yale.edu/images/BFS/1075.jpg [photo]].

Interestingly, Frederick Law Olmstead was also pivital in the development of the grounds for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His famous "Wooded Isle" remains a centerpiece in Chicago's Jackson Park. [http://www.hydepark.org/parks/jpac/jpkhistoryandfair.htm [link]] and
[http://www.hydepark.org/parks/pics/laggen4.JPG [photo]].

For a more detailed account of Olmstead's landscape architecture as it relates to the 1893 World's Fair, see Erik Larson's ''The Devil in the White City''.

:These would be anachronistic, but as the note for p29 above mentions, a lab existed by 1882.

'''World-System''' 
Dr. Tesla's idea of providing electrical power that anyone could tap in for free alludes the birth of wireless internet before being monopolized by b(p)ig companies and corporate greed.

==Page 34==

'''the most terrible weapon the world has seen . . . rational systems of control''' 
This statement defines the threat—as the plutocrats see it—of free power (anarchy) and their justification for bending government and every other compelling force to stamp it out.

'''out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all''' 
Vibe quotes Thomas Hobbes, who in ''Leviathan'' (1651) described the primitive state of the human race as ''bellum omnium contra omnes,'' the war of all against all, which was ended only by the creation of the State. Note the change of "war" to "anarchy."

'''Pierpont''' 
John Pierpont Morgan I (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker, who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation.
[...]
In 1900, Morgan financed inventor Nikola Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower with $150,000 for experiments in radio. Tesla was unsuccessful and, in 1904, Morgan pulled out. Later, Tesla created an AC generator
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan [cite]]

'''non-linear phenomena of scale''' 
Linear scaling means, for example, store twice as much charge, get twice as much voltage. An instance of behavior becoming nonlinear is when air insulation breaks down (arcs, lightning); here adding charge may lead to a ''decrease'' in voltage.

'''Somble, Strool & Fleshway''' 
Law firms in Pynchon have such charming names; compare Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus, and Short in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] or Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49'']. This one has more of a Dickensian sound. Somble could be a portmanteau of ''somber'' and ''tremble'' or ''some bull''; Strool, perhaps, of ''strait'' (= narrow) and ''cruel,'' or ''stool'' and ''drool''. "Fleshway" might suggest a reference to Samuel Butler's ''The Way of All Flesh,'' which was not published until 1903, but it seems more likely to go back to [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20041027.shtml a biblical phrase] associated with death.

Using the onomatapeia technique such as in the ''Gravity's Rainbow'' law firm, we start to get 'Some Bull, is ('t) Drool And.......Help needed! How about "some bull's strool and fleshway." Strool being the portmanteau of stool and drool, and fleshway being the meaty part of the flushway (g.i. tract, anus) -- you know, something like bullshit with the consitency of diarrhea.

Incidentally, Strool is an actual surname as well as the name of a town in South Dakota.

By the way, Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (see "all against all" entry toward the top of this page) is also the source of Salitieri et al. ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," describing the life of human beings in their primitive state). 

'''vestiary''' 
Of, or relating to, clothing.

==Page 36==

'''Fairgoers would see the ship overhead and yet not see it''' 
Useful property for a surveillance platform.

'''Lew Basnight''' 
"Bas" is French for "low", though "bas nuit" means nothing in French.

A detective named 'Lew' reminds us (who is "us"?) of Ross Macdonald's character Lew Archer which in turn recalls another detective, Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade in San Francisco detective agency Spade & Archer. This may be a bad pun on 'lube-ass night' and also might refer to the incident causing Lew to be shunned by his peers.

[[image:beaver-on-the-brain.jpg|thumb|Beaver on the Brain T-Shirt|right]]Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, working a whole sexual angle, naming his character after the phrase "BAS night," meaning a boys' night out, "BAS" being an acronym for "Bitches Ain't Shit" from the [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drdre/bitchesaintshit.html "song" by Dr. Dre] (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). And, hey, Lew meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie Shaft? Twat crossed w/clit? A-and isn't that tetractys an inverted beaver?), where he meets Yashmeen, a ''very'' sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode ([[ATD 171-198#Page 183|p. 183]]) (Beavers, fercrissakes!). Perhaps something worth following up ... or not!

It is possible Basnight is an Americanization of the German "Fasnacht". "Fastnacht or Fasnacht is the pre-Lenten carnival in Alemannic folklore in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and western Austria. It is also known in parts of Pennsylvania Dutch Country as Fauschnaut Day and is celebrated on the day before Ash Wednesday, or the last Tuesday before Lent." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasnacht]

"A likely derivation is from PIE pwo- "purify" (cognate to pava-mana), or alternatively connected with Middle High German vaselen "prosper, bud" and interpreted as a fertility rite."

Fasnacht Day is known in English as Shrove Tuesday. "The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday] All of this seems to tally well with the Basnight character.

Another pun theory: on page 38, Lew is described as being in an ignorance "black as night." This can be abbreviated to "Basnight."
Lew is pronounced "loo," which of course is the British toilet.
Lew Basnight then means, "toilet, black as night." Just a thought...

'''White City Investigations''' 
Since the White City dates from 01 May 1893, this ought to be later.

The name recalls the White Visitation of [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. Any connection?

==Page 37==
'''fictitiousness''' 
On this and the previous page, there is a question raised of whether the Chums are fictional. Or it could be saying that such fantastical sights as the airship are easy to miss at the fair.

It seems more likely that the comparison here is simply between that of the fair, a small, self-contained world of marvels (like all World's Fairs) and the "real world" outside its gates.

There is lots more going on (and it's ''lots'' more interesting). Consider these passages on pages 36-37:
*the . . . celebration possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and agency
*The harsh nonfictional world waited outside the White City's limits
*he (Lew) had not . . . heard of the Chums of Chance
*every boy knows the Chums of Chance
*you're not storybook characters. . . . Are you?
Too much back-and-forth about fiction to be '''just''' about the exposition and the real world. Some premises that are implicit here:
*The Chums know that they live in literature whether they have a "real" existence or not.
*They know their books are popular with an audience of boys. (Lindsay is surprised that Lew didn't read them earlier, not that he isn't reading them now.)
*Lew doesn't regard objective evidence (they are standing before him, he's ascended in their ship) as sufficient to rule out ambiguity (". . . Are you?").
*The lads are able to experience and act only in a quasi-fictitious environment. Off the fairgrounds (in the WCI office), Randolph gives nothing but answers scripted for him by National.
All this suggests that even the Chums aren't sure on what level they exist. They definitely have adventures, as recorded in their books, but they don't seem to have adventures ''not'' contained in the novels.
What will happen if they come to the end of a ''Chums'' book while we are still reading ''AtD''?

'''No more than Wyatt Earp or Nellie Bly''' 
See the next two entries. Earp had a "real" life but people remember him chiefly because of stories written about him (and by him through ghostwriters, [http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/zpub2000/sfentries&cmd=list&range=0,50&Title~=E&cmd=all&Id=98 link 1], [http://www.ferncanyonpress.com/tombston/robbery.shtml link 2]). Bly entertained masses of people by having adventures and then writing about them. Each "lived" through a body of literature.

'''Wyatt Earp''' 
(1848–1929), was a teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, and saloon-keeper in the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to Alaska. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp Wikipedia]

'''Nellie Bly''' 
(1864-1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Wikipedia]

'''Regarding Lew Basnight's malady...''' 
Again, there seems to be a character with a neurological illness; in this case it is presented as amnesia, but seizures also result in "lost time". (See comments on Miles' "electricity coming on" on page 24.) Such maladies are more common than one supposes, and can offer a glimpse of other-worldliness akin to that of hallucinogenics, and epileptics have, at times, been considered to have access to past or future lives.
:OR it could be the case that Lew has fallen through a crack in time-space and entered a parallel universe; in the previous universe (which he simply remembers as the past), he had not done anything wrong, which explains his perplexity. The same might be the case with Miles, which would be why he did not expect baskets of crockery near his feet. Such moving among worlds is a thread in this work.

'''making a point of pronouncing his name disrespectfully''' 
The only way it could be done is, apparently, by saying Lube Ass Night. Well, that or tone of voice.

'''the Upstate-Downstate Beast''' 
Illinois is one of three states with an Upstate, though one of them doesn't use the term Downstate (South Carolina divides itself into Upstate and Lowcountry). The nickname points to a traveling man, perhaps. "Moral horror," "denounced," "revulsion" probably fit with many crimes, though most of those would have led to a prison sentence and we don't have any information of Lew's serving time.

'''"Although the longer a fellow's name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from non-fiction."''' 
May express Pynchon's reaction to the press' treatment of him over the years. In 1964, when Pynchon heard that the ''New York Herald Tribune'' was writing an article about him, Pynchon wrote to his agent that he assumed the piece "will be riddled with the same lies, calumnies and all-around knavish disregard for my privacy" as previous articles. ("Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask," ''New York Times,'' 4 Mar 1998).

'''Wensleydale''' 
A type of cheese made in Yorkshire, England.

==Page 38==

'''"You have destroyed your name."''' 
Wensleydale using very strong language. He doesn't say "destroyed your reputation" or "discredited your name" but "''destroyed'' your name." Does anyone else see this as suggesting Lew's name was not Lew Basnight before his sin?

'''to plead with him to come back''' 
A strange response, that Troth should ask the Upstate-Downstate Beast to return to her. You would think she'd prefer him as far away as he could get.

'''one of your other wives''' 
A direct reference to Lew's sin, or is Troth just pelting Lew with anything that's in reach?

==Page 39==

'''kazoos''' 
This silly instrument appears in several Pynchon novels.

'''slow ritual movement''' 
Maybe tai chi, or anachronistic Gurdjieffian dance?

'''Drave''' 
Possibly a back formation from 'Dravidians,' referring to David Koresh's Branch Davidians.
: huh? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 16:23, 19 December 2006 (PST)
: I have to second that "huh?" This seems exceedingly improbable. [[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 06:15, 15 February 2007 (PST)
Another possibility is that Pynchon had in mind the Scottish noun "drave," which the OED defines as a "fishing expedition in which several men take part, each supplying a net and receiving a share of the profits made. Later, A haul (of fish); also, a shoal." This resonates with the evangelical role that Drave plays (Cf. Matthew 4:18, where Jesus addresses Peter and Matthew, "And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.")

It should be noted, though, that there is also a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drave Drave river] in south central Europe, though there seems to be little textual evidence to support this association.

'''Saratoga chips''' 
Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs, NY, and were often called Saratoga chips in the 19th century.

'''Esthonia Hotel''' 
Atonia is a lack of normal muscle tension, but also, "A frightening form of paralysis that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, most often upon falling asleep or waking up. Commonly called sleep paralysis, the condition is due to an ill-timed disconnection between the brain and the body." [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9811 Definition] This could mean that the hotel in question is nothing more than an internal hallucination of Basnight's, further suggesting that his problem is one of neurological rather than simply moral or spiritual cause.
:Could be, but at the same time let's not overlook the plain reading: Esthonia is an obsolete spelling of the country ''Estonia.''

'''''liable for criminal penalties''''' 
Law and the legal profession so far appear in AtD more than any other Pynchon novel (perhaps save ''The Crying of Lot 49''), and so far, like here, in a negative or confusing light, perhaps as part of the establishment Pynchon seems to rail against in the novel.

==Page 40==

'''lofty regions no high-iron pioneer had yet dared''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainwright_Building In the early 1890s] anything taller than about 10 stories would have qualified.

'''remembrance stick''' 
Similar to keisaku in Zen Buddhism, an attempt by a sensei to alert students to their mindlessness in zazen (sitting meditation), usually administered by a stick. An English translation is stick of compassion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyosaku [Wikipedia]]

Lew's performance of commonplace and strange chores is also similar to the way Zen training can proceed for novitiates.

==Page 41==

'''you keep bouncing free. Avoiding penance and thereby definition''' 
It is hard to tie Drave down philosophically. No connection between sin and penance, penance as destiny, penance happens or doesn't, and now this idea that penance ''defines'' one's existence.

==Page 42==

'''Spring arrived''' 
We've seen Lew pretty well through a year: summertime (p. 38) when Troth followed him to Chicago, autumn (p. 40) when he checked in at the Esthonia, winter (p. 41) as his bank account starved, now in the spring his moment of grace.

'''scorcher cap''' 
The cap of an early bicycling enthusiast. According to [http://www.velorution.biz/?p=1288 this site]:

:"In […]1892 [… a] bicyclist to be considered genuine had to be dressed in bicycle clothes. A man had to wear bicycle pants which were baggy at the top and tight to the legs below. Then he had to have bicycle socks and shoes. The shoes were made of canvass. Then he had to have a loose fitting grey colored short which we would designate now as a sport shirt. Then on his head he had to wear a tight fitting cap with a long bill in front, the longer the better up to a certain ceiling length. With this outfit and a bicycle with drop handlebars he was ready to appear in public as a real cyclist. If he could make 20 miles an hour on a good track he was called a 'scorcher,' the idea being that he was going so fast that he would scorch at least the end of his nose if nothing else."

'''shirtwaists with huge shoulders''' 
[[image:shirtwaist.jpg|thumb|caption|Shirtwaists|150px|right]]Fashionable the year of the Fair, the shirtwaist is a dress with a bodice (waist) like a tailored shirt and an attached straight or full skirt, the huge shoulders being the sort of "puffy" look of the sleeves. They are now called blouses. Compare Chevrolette McAdoo's outfit, [[ATD_26-56#Page 26|p. 26]].

'''He understood that things were exactly what they were.''' 
This sentence sums up the entire experience at the Esthonia hotel, which seems to be a Zen-like initiation. Here, Lew Basnight seems to have attained some form of enlightenment, and the description ("a condition...which he later came to think of as grace"), along with this sentence, are almost textbook examples of Zen enlightenment. No lights flash, no changes are seen; one merely understands that things are what they are. After this experience, he leaves the hotel, and no longer needs to be there. He then embarks on his new career, in part because of his extreme ability to notice minute details; something that he was not said to have had before.
:The sentence can also serve as a guide to readers of ''AtD.'' Even when it is tempting to speculate that "this paragraph is about Richard Nixon" or protest that "you can't see Sirius on a summer evening," it is worth the effort to let the text mean what it means.

==Page 43==

'''transfigured''' 
In Lew's time of grace, he shows a changed face.

'''leisurely rips through the fabric of the day''' 
See below

==Page 44==

'''He had learned to step to the side of the day.''' 
Through the book there are juxtapositions of things with and against the day (the 'title motif'). Here, we are told that Lew has learned to step "to the side" of the day. Possibly he is able to enter another plane? This is possible considering the dream-like hotel sequence on previous pages.
:I think that the "other plane" interpretation is a bit of a stretch. The passage seems to imply that Lew has learned to will and maintain a degree of detachment from his surroundings, perhaps a relinquishment of his perceived control over events or his attempts to control them.
: -- I don't see it as a stretch if we accept that he now recognizes that there are alternate, parallel, universes.

'''it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts''' 
The quotes here may be to distinguish the fact that while technically living in Chicago, Lew sometimes exists or moves within a place or plane that others also living there don't see, or have access to.
:Yes, or universes rather than planes.

==Page 45==

'''two-headed eagle''' 
As Holy Roman Emperor, the Austro-Hungarian emperor bore a two-headed eagle (each head crowned) as part of his arms. The Tsar of Russia also used a two-headed eagle, but it was triply crowned (one crown between the heads). The Serbian two-headed eagle appeared on a shield with one crown above it, and the Montenegrin one had a single crown between the heads. Other details of the envelope would serve to disambiguate.

'''Trabants''' 
"Trabanten" (German for 'satellites') originally - during the Thirty Years' War - were lightly armed foot soldiers; later this term was used for servants and/or bodyguards of high-ranking persons.

'''"have a lawyer explain civil liability to you"''' 
Again, law.

'''gumshoe''' 
Perhaps a bit too early to use this term; the Dictionary of American Slang dates it as "by 1906".

'''a couple a thousand hunkies''' 
"Hunkies" was a slur against Hungarians and other eastern Europeans. The word may have morphed into "honkies."

'''Francis Ferdinand''' 
This is indeed the same Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in 1914 triggered World War I. At the time of his appearance in AtD, he would have been 30, and his two passions throughout young adulthood and his 20s were travel and hunting (it is estimated that he shot more than 5,000 deer in his lifetime). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Wikipedia entry]. He did indeed attend the Chicago Exposition. [http://columbus.iit.edu/bookfair/ch27.html]

A selection of Habsburgs, with ''AtD'' figures in '''''bold italic''''':
*'''''Franz Joseph I''''' (1830-1916; sometimes anglicized as Francis Joseph) became Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, King of Bohemia in 1848 and occupied the throne until his death; even the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_I_of_Austria Wikipedia entry,] which seeks to be exhaustive, resorts to "etc." in the list of his titles
:*[http://www.visualstatistics.net/East-West/Mayerling%20Tragedy/Mayerling%20tragedy.htm '''''Rudolph'''''] (1858-1889), Crown Prince, Franz Joseph's son, who died, apparently by suicide, with his mistress '''''Mary Vetsera''''' at the Mayerling hunting lodge
*'''''Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph''''' (1832-1867), Franz Joseph's brother, set up as [http://www.casaimperial.org/emperador.htm Emperor Maximilian of Mexico] 1864-67 with French backing, executed
*[http://www.geocities.com/henrivanoene/genaustria06.html ''Karl Ludwig''] (1833-96), Franz Joseph's brother, from whom the rest of the Habsburgs descended
:*[[F|'''''Franz Ferdinand''''']] (1863-1914), Karl Ludwig's son, who became heir to the throne on his father's death and was [http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/duke.htm assassinated at Sarajevo] on June 28, 1914; the murder indirectly triggered the World War
:*[http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/~saw/royal/r16.html ''Otto Franz''] (1865-1906), Karl Ludwig's son
::*[http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/karl.htm ''Karl I''] (1888-1922), Otto's elder son, who succeeded Franz Joseph as Emperor and King (abdicated 1918 at the end of the World War) and became ancestor of half the Habsburgs living today
::*''Maximilian'' (1895-1952), Otto's younger son, ancestor of the other half
:*[http://www.thepeerage.com/p11163.htm ''Ferdinand Karl Ludwig''] (1868-1915), Karl Ludwig's son
*[http://worldroots.com/cgi-bin/gasteldb?@I13495@ ''Ludwig Viktor''] (1842-1919), Franz Joseph's brother

See the annotation about Austria-Hungary on the next page.

'''shive artist''' 
Someone proficient with a knife (shive=knife or razor).

'''to rewrite history''' 
Hold on, '''re'''write? As Vibe did on [[#rewrite|page 33,]] Privett seems to reason that history has already been decided and some action would change it rather than generate a valid new history.

==Page 46==

'''"staff," a mixture of plaster and hemp fibers''' 
[http://ftp.apci.net/~truax/1904wf/WF_Mem-Staff.htm [pix and info]]

[http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html One source] says it was jute, not hemp.

According to [http://www.buildingstonemagazine.com/summer-06/historic.html ''Building Stone'' magazine,] the buildings were meant to be painted in bright colors, but the Chicago climate put the kibosh on that. Even keeping them white called for continuous repainting.

The Museum of Science and Industry is the only structure surviving from the exposition. Built as the Palace of Fine Arts, it started out faced in staff but was later [http://www.aviewoncities.com/chicago/museumofscienceandindustry.htm rebuilt] to the original exterior design in limestone and marble.

'''to counterfeit some deathless white stone''' 

Given the many references throughout AtD to "white" and "stones" to ''counterfeit'' a ''deathless'' white stone seems portentous.

'''"In Austria," the Archduke was explaining, ". . . the Chicago Stockyards might possibly be rented out . . . for a weekend's amusement"''' 

Pynchon continues his linking of the Stockyard killing-floor with the genocidal horrors of the 20th Century, it seems. See above. Heidegger (sic) made this connection somewhere and J.M Coetze's novel Elizabeth Costello uses it in a key chapter that was published separately. Researching the details.

'''beaters who drive the animals toward the hunters . . . waiting to shoot them''' 
Skillful use of ambiguity: waiting to shoot the animals or the beaters?

'''"Hungarians occupy the lowest level of brute existence"''' 
Even if the quote might be fictive, the Archduke's characterization is close to the point. Franz Ferdinand, a dour reactionary with aggressive ideas in foreign policy, had the reputation of an avowed Hungarophobe. The Compromise of 1867 created a dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which the Archduke sought to transform in a "trialistic" way, giving an enivsioned southern Slav union of Croatia (which was united in a sub-confederation with Hungary), Bosnia and Dalmatia a status similar to that of the Kingdom of Hungary. Note how the Czechs, a population about twice as large as southwestern Slavs, were omitted from this scheme. The idea was evidently to weaken the Hungarian establishment, and recentralize power in Vienna.

'''Mannlicher''' 
A double-barreled rifle designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher. It is reported that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had several of these made special for him.

Interestingly enough, the rifle is also mentioned in ''Green Hills of Africa'' and ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'' by Ernest Hemingway, who used it extensively on hunting.

Franz was eventually assassinated in Sarajevo. Coincidentally (?), fellow assassinee JFK was initially claimed to have been a victim of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher rifle.

==Page 47==

'''K&K Special Security''' 
"K&K" stands for "Kaiserlich und Königlich," German for "imperial and royal (kingly)," to indicate the Austrian two titles of the ruler of the Dual Monarchy: King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserlich_und_königlich Wikipedia entry].

'''Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit''' 
This is not a German word as far as I know and most likely not even a degenerate Habsburg or one of his officers would have used it (but then I haven't read Franz Ferdinand's account of his travels...). Sounds more like some Babelfish machine translation of "pastry-depravity" to me. I wonder what the German translator will make of this. My guess is, s/he will not make a "typical German" combined noun out of it, but turn the phrase to be able to use an adverb like "mehlspeisennarrisch" instead (what with in Austria and Bavaria there is a word for (mostly sweet) pastry: "Mehlspeise" (literally "flour-meal), and "narrisch" is Austrian/Viennese for being (slightly) mad). But then, of course, there might be a pun intended I as a bad english-speaker just dont get. Maybe via the pronounciation? Check out this [http://www.dict.cc/?s=Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit dictionary], head for "continue searching" and press "voice output" - voila, thats what "Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit" sounds like.

The term probably is made up, but the meaning is more like "shameful addiction to cookie dough." In the context of detectives, what may be happening here is this: The Austrians have heard the canard that American policemen are addicted to doughnuts, but they misunderstand both ''doughnut'' and ''addicted.''

Another possibility: Austrians have read that American detectives will do anything for dough.

'''Boll Weevil Lounge''' 
The boll weevil, a destructive cotton pest, first arrived in America (via Mexico) in 1892, only one year before the opening section of ATD. It is a fitting name for a "Negro Bar" as the boll weevil is the subject of dozens of blues songs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil [Wikipedia]]

1893 is too soon for the songs and probably for the lounge too. Cotton was still king in the South; the big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_States_and_International_Exposition_%281895%29 Atlanta exposition] was two years in the future, and the economic dislocation had not properly begun. The boll weevil songs date from the teens-20s and later.

'''...the only place in Chicago a man could find a decent orange phosphate...''' 
A reference to the modern stereotype that black people like orange soda, here called a phosphate.

==Page 48==

'''Wassermelone''' 
Watermelon; another black stereotype...

'''grip cars''' 
The lead cars in cable-car systems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_City_Railway [Wikipedia]]

'''''deine Mutti'', as you would say''' 
Franz Ferdinand is attempting to engage the patrons of the Boll Weevil Lounge in a game of "the dozens", an insult contest in which opponents make fun of each other's mothers. "The dozens" has its origins in the New Orleans slave trade. As with the boll weevil, "the dozens" is closely associated with blues music. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dozens [Wikipedia]]

'''the World's Fair, not the World's Ugly''' 
A fairly sophisticated pun, if F.F.'s English is so rudimentary.

'''''...'st los, Hund?''''' 
German for "'s up, dog?"

'''All Pimps Look Alike to Me''' 
An early rag by Ernest Hogan was entitled All Coons Look Alike to Me; "Hogan was evidently not the originator of the song's lyrics, having appropriated them after hearing a pianist in a Chicago salon playing a song titled "All Pimps Look Alike to Me"". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hogan See this article.] 
For more "coon" references see text and annotations: [[#Page_33|page 33]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and especially [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424]].

''Who's usin' who? What should we do? Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too'' 
(Icky Thump - White Stripes) / not relevant to this entry but worth listening to.

'''scapegrace''' 
Scoundrel.

'''And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!''' 
WWI?

Was Franz Ferdinand some sort of ruthless cosmopolitan at the time being? You can really see it from his ATD passages.

'''keester''' 
Buttocks.

==Page 49==

'''Kinsley's''' 
A famous steakhouse at 105-107 Adams St. in downtown Chicago. The building was erected in 1885.

'''At first Lew took it for a church''' 
This could be an allusion to the film, ''On The Waterfront'', and a similar scene when Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is sent by Johnny Friendly and Co. to eavesdrop on a meeting being held in a church by local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) along with workers from the docks who are fed up with Friendly and the Mob, especially in light of a recent death. Social themes of film seem apt as well. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_waterfront].

Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich)incidentally was a product of this milieu, born in Chicago in 1912 to a Serb steelworker father and Czech seamstress mother. The Sekulovich family hails from Herzegovina.

'''Welsbach mantles''' 
One of the most important advances in the history of lighting, the Welsbach mantle (for a period so ubiquitous it became more commonly known simply as 'gas mantle') was first sold commercially in 1892 and quickly spread throughout Europe. It remained an important part of street lighting until the widespread introduction of electric lighting in the early 1900s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle Wikipedia entry].

'''Reverend Moss Gatlin''' 
A fictional character. Is he connected to Rev. Cherrycoke? They are both Reverends with strong political opinions and you can hear Pynchon's voice here very strong.

Possible allusion to Reverend Fr. John M. Corridan, the real-life counterpart of Father Barry in ''On The Waterfront''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Corridan Wikipedia]

Some real, or anyway nonfictional, anarchist preachers:
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard107.html Thomas Olney,] 17th-century Baptist anarchist who was influential in Rhode Island
*[http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol055/96047023.html Rudolf Rocker] (1873-1958), nicknamed the "anarchist rabbi"
*[http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis,] Dutch minister who came to anarchism in 1897
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/critics/mckinley/chap4.html Albert Dahlquist and Joseph A. Wildman,] caught up in persecutions after the McKinley assassination (Dahlquist was nearly lynched; Wildman was tarred and feathered)
*[http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301208.shtml Father Frank Morales,] participant in Portland anti-globalization demonstrations
*[http://www.deadanarchists.org/anton.html Hugh O. Pentecost,] who in 1889 was slated to address a meeting in commemoration of the Haymarket; Philadelphia authorities suppressed the gathering

'''fascinators''' 
Hair adornments. [http://www.ribbonsandpearls.co.uk/catalogue/fascinators/fascinator_hair_accessories_intro.htm [pix]]

'''bearing the insults of the day''' 
See notes on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''Blake's Jerusalem''' 
The original lines From William Blake's poem are:

I will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England's green and pleasant land.

'''Fierce as the winter's tempest . . . Death's for the bought and sold!''' 
This lyric does not come up in a Google search. It doesn't flow like any other lyric in Pynchon but reads like a rather good hymn text. No variations in the meter, no words broken for the sake of rhyme, no punctuation to show lengthened or chopped syllables. And yet thematically it is a seamless fit with the text around it. Are the lines original in ''AtD,'' or can their source be identified?

==Page 50==

'''Picardy third''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy_third Wikipedia entry]

==Page 51==

'''deadfalls''' 
Low points where refuse collects? Cf. Pynchon's story, Low-Lands?[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deadfalls [def]]

'''prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate''' 
Coupled with the cover blurb Pynchon wrote: "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction." Could ''Against the Day'' be Pynchon's prophecy of a future America?

[[image:we_never_sleep.jpg|thumb|175px|right]]'''The Unsleeping Eye''' 
Reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency. Pinkerton's National Detective Agency had a logo with an eye in the center, and below it read, "We Never Sleep." See also [[ATD_1-25#Page_13|page 13]].

'''bay rum''' 
A type of cologne or after-shave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_rum Wikipedia article]

==Page 52==

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Lew Basnight's temporary presence on the airship may be the first clue as to why it's called ''Inconvenience''. Perhaps his growing sympathy for the anarchists will lead to greater involvement by him, the Chums, or at least the book in portraying the anarchist movement, which is viewed as an inconvenience to the ruling classes. Pynchon may consider his novel's message, similarly, as an inconvenient truth about America's past, present or both.

:I thought it was just a polysyllable that sounds stately but means the opposite.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:18, 5 December 2006 (PST)

In ''Mason & Dixon'', the willful reality of other people are referred to as inconveniences more than once.

'''the whiteness of the place nearly unbearable''' 
Causing an effect something like snow blindness.

'''some weeks till the fair closes''' 
30 October 1893.

'''our future's all a blank''' 
Whoever the Chums get their orders from, they have not received any new ones yet. They look ahead and see a blank page.

'''Freddie Turner''' 
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 - 1932) was, with Charles A. Beard, the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He is best known for ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', an essay which describes his views on how the idea of the frontier shaped the American character, and how the frontier drove American history and America's westward expansion. Excerpt: "In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization."
[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html eText here...]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Wikipedia]

==Page 53==

'''Here's where the Trail comes to an end at last''' 
With the advent of the railroad, the West changed dramatically. Chicago became the stockyards and slaughterhouse of America, and cowboys only funneled their cattle in that direction, no longer simply following them on the range or leading them to more local places of slaughter. The cowboy had become a cog in the wheel of a mechanism of death.

'''Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches''' 
Mentioned in 1911 Britannica article 'Slaughter-house' [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Slaughter-house [etext]]

'''charabanc''' 
An open-topped bus for tourists.

'''"The frontier ends and disconnection begins"''' 
Here, the free cowboy myth of Buffalo Bill's show is replaced by the grim reality of the stockyard worker.

'''Cause and effect''' 
A major theme in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''How the dickens do I know?''' 
A possible reference to the novels of Charles Dickens, who critiques in such works as ''Hard Times'' (1854) the onset of urban decay, and the choked living and working conditions of the proletariat as the Industrial Revolution steams onward. 
Or it may just be a standard euphemism; polite speakers were enjoined not to name the Devil.

'''hob-raising years''' 
Hell-raising years; his early years. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hob Definition of "hob".]

==Page 54==

'''where you knew you could stand and piss would flow two ways at once.''' 
The Professor is talking about growing up in Colorado, where the Continental Divide passes. It would be logical to suggest that, at the precise location of this divide, piss would indeed flow both east and west.
:For Easterners at least, it's a well-known tourist ritual to pee right on the line.

The best place to do this, for tourists, is at Cache La Poudre Lake, headwaters of the Colorado River on Trail Ridge Road (US 34) in Rocky Mountain National Park—it is exactly on the Divide, and water exits to East and West, Atlantic and Pacific.

'''into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well''' 
Describing Lew's movement now, but a few pages previously that of the stock at the slaughterhouse.

'''Cheerfulness . . . a precarious commodity''' 
The original narrator of the Chums passages has definitely been pushed aside now. They seem to be in a totally different book.

==Page 55==

'''. . . they continued in a fragmented reverie which, . . . often announced some change in the works''' 
Good to notice when the Chums get like this again: i.e. unfocused, depressed, without direction, it may lead to patterns in the plot.
:No Fair, no orders, no adventures: The Chums are between books!

'''Speculation began to fill the day.''' 
See note on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''the ill-famed Hawk''' 
In deepening autumn it is ''rehearsing'' "swift descent, merciless assault, rapture of souls"; at the end of the passage "the temperature head[s] down." The Hawk appears to be a metaphor for winter or its storms. ([http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_hawk/ possible definition?]) 
:That is pretty conclusive. ''Hawk'' an established and documented metaphor for the winter wind.
The Hawk is also one of the ubiquitous birds of prey in ATD. The words showing its lethal effect and the drop in temperature are Pynchon themes
for evil. Evil comes from the lands of low temperatures. See GR.

In addition to these meanings, TRP also demonstrates local knowledge here, as the Hawk is the name of a specific wind in Chicago. The Hawk is the name of a northeast wind, one that comes off Lake Michigan usually in the spring. A meteorologist will tell you that a northeast wind is somewhat unusual, contrary to (or against) the prevailing winds that generally come from the west. The effects of the Hawk can be seen at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where centerfield is on the northeast corner of Sheffield and Waveland. When the Hawk is blowing hits that, given a usual southwest wind, have a chance at being home runs will die in the outfield and are easily caught. The Hawk is a reminder that, though winter has left town, it will be back. The wind has a very particular resonance for a Chicagoan, and it's very impressive that Pynchon, not a native, should make use of it, especially in such an offhand manner.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

User talk:Volver

2008-03-06T02:45:01Z

Bleakhaus:

wow, are you reading it AGAIN??? :) [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:08, 1 February 2007 (PST)

cool, thanks for your last message and the heads up on Geoffrey Brock-- I actually [http://www.themodernword.com/features/interview_brock.html interviewed] him before his Queen Loana translation came out-- a nice guy and a great translator.

as for your second read through, again, bravo-- I have read GR 3-4 times but certainly not in succession! you are truly a dedicated Pynchonian. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 09:53, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Thanks for the comment on 'Pataphysics--I knew the apostrophe was going to cause trouble. I just got into Roger Shattuck's book "The Banquet Years" on 4 early surrealists, including Jarry. Currently the Philadelphia Art Museum has an exhibit of paintings and sculpture by Thomas Chimes, an 85 year old artist fascinated by Jarry. Should be there into June. Finding Jarry's works is naother story. Ubu plays are easy, the others not so much.[[User:Bklyn48|Bklyn48]] 13:37, 28 February 2007 (PST)

Hey, thanks for the 411 on Lorandite. I'm going to incorporate your info into the paragraph I wrote. Stay tuned![[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 14:08, 5 March 2007 (PST)

Hey Volver-- fyi I've started a website to apply the Pynchonwiki model we've created to any other book: http://literarywiki.org/ -- So if you've got some book you've been itching to annotate, drop on by! [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 18:45, 5 March 2008 (PST)

ATD 336-357

2008-03-01T07:26:44Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 342 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 336==

'''R-girls''' 
Rail girls?

Makes me think of b-girls, or bar girls [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=B-girls]. Seems appropriate, given the context, to imagine r-girls are the rails' equivalent.

'''White City''' 
The neighbourhood of extravagant buildings made for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. (First mentioned on [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25#Page_3 page 3]).

'''Jackson Park''' 
The site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Park_%28Chicago%29 Wikipedia]

'''"hoping for some glimpse of her White City, but saw only the darkened daytime one"''' 
"The White City... impressed everyone who saw it (at least before air pollution began to darken the façades) that plans were considered to refinish the [alabaster] exteriors in marble or some other material. These plans had to be abandoned in July 1894 when much of the fair grounds was destroyed in a fire. The fire occurred at the height of the Pullman Strike; since the strikers set other fires that very week, it is possible the fire was set by disgruntled Pullman employees." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exposition_of_1893 Wikipedia]

Pynchon has mentioned the decay of the White City earlier in the novel.

==Page 337==

'''Mrs. Dragsaw''' 
??? Speculation: dragsaw [http://www.webshots.com/explains/home-and-garden/dragsaw-case.html (pic)] is a real word [http://www.answers.com/topic/dragsaw (definition)] and certainly a funny name, especially for a woman hiring waitresses in a restaurant that serves lunch. Pynchon has a penchant for funny, if not outrageous, names.

'''Chillicothe''' 
City in Ross County, Ohio. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillicothe,_Ohio wiki]

==Page 338==

'''grubstake''' 
funds or supplies advanced to a mining prospector (or a person starting a business) in return for a promised share of the profits.

'''Maude Adams''' 
American actress, 1872-1953. First to play Peter Pan on the American stage (1905). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Adams Wikipedia article.] '''Not to be confused with Bond Girl Maud Adams!'''

'''Mock Duck's boys''' 
In the era of soysage, sunburgers and seitan, Mock Duck has just about dropped from public consciousness. A gluten-based vegetarian substance with at least an imagined resemblance to roast duck. Oriental grocers sometimes still carry it.

Actually, Mock Duck was a Tong leader in New York City, most active 1900
through 1912. Sai Wing Mock, aka "Mock Duck" was renowned for his eccentric
combat style; while hatchets, clubs and knives were standard weapons in
street-gang warfare, Mock Duck's method was to sow chaos and fear by crouching
in the center of the street, putting his head down, drawing two .44s and firing
wildly in all directions. (He was reportedly a terrible shot.)
(While Pynchon does add a lot of goofy names and implausible characters to his
fictions, it's the inclusions of the real ones that hold the history
together.)[[User:Infanttyrone|Infanttyrone]] 16:10, 11 December 2007 (PST)

==Page 339==

'''''en deshabille''''' 
partly dressed in a loose manner.

'''Modestine''' 
A 19th century first name. Perhaps a pun on the fact that she has not been modest.

'''let's say a ''short vacation''''' 
Maternity leave.

'''Hop Fung''' 
Not sure, but "wing hop fung" supposedly means "together forever prosper" [http://www.winghopfung.com/about.html]. Anyone?

: Wing=Forever, Hop=Together, Fung=Prosper

'''Celestial''' 
Chinese. "Celestial Empire" is a translation of one of the native names for China.

'''lobbygow''' 
"A hanger-on, go-between, or message runner, particularly one involved in the drug traffic—the speculation being that such persons usually hang about in lobbies" [http://mouthfulsfood.com/forums//lofiversion/index.php/t15.html cite]

'''"Chop Suey stories!"''' 
The Chinese in America making an industry out of fulfilling the natives' fantasies. Both the white-slavery dramatizations ("comediettas") and the dish chop suey itself are inauthentic but expected by Anglo tourists.

'''On Leong''' 
One of the many Chinese-American societies originally created for mutual support and protection (a ''tong'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tong_%28organization%29]) that became a criminal organization. The On Leong were influential in many major American cities around the turn of the century.

Also known as the On Leong Laborer and Merchant Association [http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/Chinese_Criminal_Enterprises.html]

==Page 340==

'''Hip Sing''' 
Like the On Leong, an influential Chinese-American criminal organization [http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/Chinese_Criminal_Enterprises.html].

Perhaps also a "hip" parody of the cook in ''Bonanza'', Hop Sing.

'''Bloody Angle''' 
Site of 20 hours of sustained combat at the Battle of Spotsylvania, 1864, thought possibly the most severe sustaned engagement of the American Civil War [http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/ABPP/BATTLES/va048.htm].

'''Word had gotten around''' 
Dahlia's experiences on Broadway play out like a perverse parody of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. Like Dahlia, Dreiser's heroine is a small town girl who makes the transition from bit-part player to star. Furthermore, Dahlia arrives in New York City in 1900, the same year that Sister Carrie was published.

'''morning-hat''' 
???

==Page 341==

'''highbinders''' 
Members of a Chinese-American criminal gang. (The word later came to apply to corrupt politicians.)

'''day club''' 
??? Speculation: what Pynchon is humorously calling a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nightstick nightstick] used in the daytime.

'''''Glans penis'''''-'''shaped helmets''' 
[[Image:glans-penis-shaped-helmet.jpg|thumb|''Glans penis''-shaped police helmet|right]] The odd, short-brimmed helmets worn by police officers in New York around the turn of the century and still worn by English police today [http://policehelmets.homestead.com/].

'''Mock Duck...firing two revolvers at a time in all directions''' 
Incredibly, Pynchon seems to be referencing the Hong Kong films of John Woo. The image of the Chinese gangster firing two guns simultaneously is a Woo trademark, first popularized in the 1986 film ''A Better Tomorrow'' and repeated in subsequent Woo films such as ''The Killer'' (1989) and ''Hard-Boiled'' (1992). The image was so closely associated with Woo's favorite leading man, Chow Yun-Fat, that it was even reprised for Chow's subsequent films in Hollywood.
According to Woo, the image of the outlaw firing two guns simultaneously was inspired by the final scene of ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid''. This is interesting in light of the Butch Cassidy references in the Telluride section of ATD. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woo#Trivia [wikipedia]]

There is an actual Tong leader being referenced here; Mock Duck was known for his two-gun style, but his methods were much different than Chow Yun-Fat's. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_Duck Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 342==

'''Tin Pan Alley''' 
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley Wikipedia]

'''acid magenta''' 
???

'''Con McVeety''' 
???

'''worst acts''' 
Itself a cliche, ''e.g'', Woody Allen's ''Broadway Danny Rose.''

==Page 343==

'''..seven-fifty a week..silent discussion.. "Ten?" and the deal was done.''' 
Curious deal here inluding the oxymoron but surely not cents nor dollars. 
Ten dollars in 1900 has the purchasing power in 2005 of
: $239.93 using the Consumer Price Index
: $205.36 using the GDP deflator

'''dime museum''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_museum Wikipedia]

'''Olio''' 
A random collection (very roughly equivalent to the Spanish word ''zarzuela''). In music halls and variety theater an olio, here an act or acts unrelated to the "real" show, would go up in front of the curtain during long scene changes.

'''Bogoslaw Borowicz''' 
???

==Page 344==

'''strange tilings...mathematical issues''' 
This passage alludes to aperiodic tilings [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperiodic_tiling Wikipedia] such as the one discovered by Roger Penrose [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling Wikipedia]. See "The wallpaper in particular presented not a repeating pattern at all" [[ATD_171-198#Page_182|in annotations to p. 182.]]

'''Dr. Ictibus''' 
The Latin word ''ictus'' is from the past participle of īcere, to stike, blow, stab, wound; it can also refer to the wound itself. ''Ictibus'', is the ablative plural case for ''ictus'', thus we have Dr. Took-away-the-wounds.

'''Safe-Deflector Hat''' 
Dave Garroway supposedly had a hat that calculated the angle to be safe from falling bricks, if I recall correctly. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Garroway Wikipedia]

'''Odo''' 
Something to do with [http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/sainto26.htm Saint Odo], patron saint of rain?

Perhaps a reference to ''Star Trek'': Odo was the shape-shifting security officer of the space station ''Deep Space 9''. [http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Odo Star Trek Wiki]

Or to the anarchist Odo in Ursula LeGuin's novel ''The Dispossessed.''

In any case, Odo's onstage speech reflects the Mad Scientist's lab assistant in dozens of horror movies.

'''''figurante''''' 
a dancer; a ballet girl.

'''a coon revue''' 
Musical entertainment with African-American performers—or just as likely white performers in blackface—doing skits and singing songs that perpetuated a range of stereotypes: step-dancing, exaggerated dialect, lax morals, etc. Coon material was extremely popular in New York and elsewhere in the Jim Crow era (and it hasn't disappeared yet). For a partial list of coon references in ''AtD,'' [[ATD_26-56#Page_48|see annotation to p. 48.]]

'''Williams and Walker''' 
Bert Williams and George Walker, well-known vaudevillians who sometimes billed themselves as "The Two Real Coons." Williams was first to cross the color line as a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies. [http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/Harlem/text/williams_walker.html Here] is a good account of their careers.

'''Calpurnia... Mrs. Caesar''' 
Calpurnia was the wife of Julius Caesar and is a minor character in Shakespeare's play. She's a model of rectitude and courage, not someone who would like the subordinating title 'Mrs' which is thus a joke.

==Page 345==

'''Liu Bing''' 
One of three approaches to exegesis are possible here. 
:1) The name is a Chinese pun on English sounds and meanings. 
:2) The name is a reference to someone with this name. 
:3) The name is a reference to Chinese meanings in a Chinese or English pun. 
An example of the first approach: 
:Lubing? Like Lew Basnight as Lube-ass night [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_26-56#Page_36 see notes for page 36]. 

Two examples from the second approach: 
:Here, it is a woman, but in history Liu Bing was 
:1) The birth name of Emperor Chong of the Han Dynasty (143-145) who became emperor at the age of 1, and died a year later. 
:2) A high-ranking official of the Song Dynasty, (lived 433-477). 

Third approach: mix and match meanings for "Liu" and Bing". 

Liu can mean:
:lovely; beautiful; tassel; pomegranate; to flow; to spread; to circulate; to move clear; deep (of water); swift; precious stone; leave (message); to retain; to stay; to remain; to keep; to preserve; tumor; sulfur; bessemerizing of matte; lutetium; pure gold; sewing of wind; bay horse with black mane; large horned-owl; willow; skein; tuft; lock; creel; fish basket; the number 6; a clod of earth; land; the sound of the wind; to soar; to stroll; walk a horse; to stroll; to linger; dripping of rain from eaves, reheat by steaming

Bing can mean:
:soldiers; a force; an army; weapons; arms; military; war-like; ice; arrow-quiver; Trachycarpus excelsa; '''arecas'''; the third of the ten heavenly stems; the third position; third; number three; get rid of; put aside; reject; keep control; hold back; sad; mournful; bright; glorious; authority; handle; hilt; bright; brilliant; luminous(surname); to grasp; hold; maintain natural property or endowment; report to (a superior)bright ; shining, splendid(surname); ancient city name; happy; plate; scabbard; round flat cake; cookie; cake; pastry; furthermore; (not) at all; simultaneously; also; together with; to combine; to join; to merge amalgamate; combine; nightmare; start to sleep; ailment; sickness; illness; disease; fall ill; sick; defect.

So, Liu Bing might mean '''"lovely arecas,"''' "six cookies," "gold handle," "six soldiers" etc.

'''''Courage,'' Camille''' 
''Coo-RAZH,'' of course. The play ''Camille'' was adapted from ''The Lady of the Camellias'' (''La dame aux camélias,'' 1848) by Alexandre Dumas the Younger. In all French versions the character's name is Marguerite, so this gag only works in English-speaking countries.

'''Lillian Russell''' 
American actress and singer (1860-1922) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Russell Wikipedia entry]. Yes, she generally did wear a hat in her photos.

'''Verbena''' 
Continuing Pynchon's running joke of naming AtD's women after flowering herbs.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbena Wikipedia]

'''I.J. & K. Smokefoot''' 
Speculation: Smokefoot is the name of a song written by Bobby Keys, Jim Gordon, and Jim Price. It appears on the 1972 album "Bobby Keys." [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfixqw5ldae~T1 Bobby Keys] was a very much in demand session sax player, appearing on many well-known albums, including the Stones' "Sticky Fingers" where he plays an extended solo on "Can't You Hear Me Knockin." While this is not at all related to what's going on in AtD at the moment, it is a way that Pynchon comes up with names and Pynchon surely knows who Bobby Keys is.

:''Along with speculation,'' the name Smokefoot has some nonmusical grounding. There's a fairly numerous and widespread American clan named Rauchfuss. Their surname, obviously, is German—like those of some nonfictional department store magnates (Gimbel, Bergdorf, Saks). If the first immigrant Rauchfuss had translated his name into English it would have come out Smokefoot. Although a moderately large Google search does not turn up a Rauchfuss or Smokefoot in the business, it is '''not''' irrelevant that one form of this name is current in the population.

Quaternions based on 'i * j * k'.
:Not too sure about this connection: the choice of ''i'', ''j'', and ''k'' in the definition of quaternary space is arbitrary, as are ''x'', ''y'', and ''z'' in more conventional definitions of three-dimensional space. Could just be that Pynchon just wrote a little three letter sequence in alphabetical order. Is there anything in the text that would support the connection between the department store and quaternions?
::Well, ''x, y'' and ''z'' are just as arbitrary—but when you see the sequence you think "coordinates, 3-space, vectors." So ''i j k'' in the book's context does suggest a link to quaternion notation. This merits a closer look.

'''Ladies' Mile''' 
Broadway from 9th to 23rd Streets, Gilded Age location of all the most fashionable shops [http://www.preserve2.org/ladiesmile/]

==Page 346==

'''sussurant''' 
Whispering, making a low continuous indistinct sound [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=susurrant].

'''Jachin and Boaz''' 
The two pillars on the porch of Solomon's Temple. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaz_and_Jachin Wikipedia entry]. They also appear on the Tarot card of The High Priestess in the A.E. Waite Rider deck, whose designer, Pamela Colman Smith, is mentioned in ''ATD'' at p. 186. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Priestess Wikipedia entry].

'''just a kid''' 
Dally was born c1889, so 14 or 15?

'''newly introduced''' 
Paris 1900? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator Wikipedia]

==Page 347==

'''Yosemite Falls''' 
For pictures see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Falls Wikipedia].

'''"Her Mother Never Told Her"''' 
"Her mother never told her the things a young girl should know. 
About the ways of college men, and how they come and go, (mostly....go). 
Now age has taken her beauty, and sin has left its sad scar; 
So remember your mothers and sisters, boys, and let her sleep under the bar" [http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=2332 Lyrics]

'''the Tombs''' 
NYC prison.

==Page 348==

'''Saturday night in Kipperville''' 
Most likely a reference to the story ''Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel'' by Virginia Lee Burton, wherein Mike and promises to dig the cellar for Popperville's new town hall in one day using his steam shovel Mary Anne. The citizens from Kipperville and other nearby towns all come to watch. [[Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel|Read the Amazon description]].

'''arecas''' 
Areca is a genus of about 50 species of single-stemmed palms in the family Arecaceae, found in humid tropical forests from Malaysia to the Solomon Islands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areca wikipedia]

'''demimondaine''' 
A [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/demimondaine woman] belonging to the [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/demimonde demimonde]; a woman whose sexual promiscuity places her outside respectable society.

'''Perrier Jouet''' 
Brand of expensive Champagne.

'''ticker-tape machines''' 
Before the crawl at the bottom of the screen, you could get a Dow-Jones ticker installed in your home or office to bring you the latest from the market. Other ticker services delivered news, sports scores, etc., all printed out on a narrow paper tape. On days of special celebration, New York City allowed people to throw ticker tape from buildings—which on any other day would be a misdemeanor—hence the fossil expression "ticker-tape parade."

==Page 349==

'''Oomie Vamplet''' 
??? Pure speculation: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=oomie oomie]. Vamplet has a [http://onlinedictionary.datasegment.com/word/vamplet definition], but also sounds like a vamp (a woman who uses her sex appeal to entrap and exploit men) who is small. Also, to vamp in music is to improvise simple accompaniment or variation of a tune.

'''Kate Chase Sprague''' 
Kate Chase Sprague was the daughter of Civil War era cabinet member Salmon P. Chase and wife of Rhode Island Governor William Sprague. She was accused of having had an affair with New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Chase wikipedia]

'''Congo violet''' 
evidently a real color: Violet dyes: trisulphon violet 2B, Congo violet;
from a patent application, # 4025164. www.patentsonline. A quite dark violet, I think, is implied...lots of associations to Congo.

'''"Funiculi, Funicula"''' 
A very popular Neapolitan song composed in 1880 by Italian composer Luigi Denza (cf p.353) to commemorate the opening of the first '''funicular''' (inclined railway) on Mount Vesuvius. The song's huge success made the Neapolitan songs spreading all over the world. In the '50s Mario Lanza made this song popular in the US but with slightly changed English lyrics. For the lyrics in its original Neapolitan dialect and English see [http://www.vesuvioinrete.it/funicolare/e_funicolare_funiculi.htm].

At least three times in ''AtD'' we have an instrumental tag to identify the nationality of a person entering the scene. Here it's the Italian one (never mind that Zombini's family comes from northern Italy, not Naples); there's also a four-note plinka-plinka to announce a Chinese person (on page ???) and an alphorn solo to cue a Swiss person (page ???).

==Page 350==

'''Chinchito''' 
"Little Bug." (Wasn't Herve Villachaise supposed to be well endowed?)

'''in the wallpaper''' 
Cf Lew on cyclomite.

'''Mickey Finn''' 
Mickey Finn in the punch is a drug-laced (clasically chloral hydrate) knockout drink. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Finn_%28drugs%29 Wikipedia].

==Page 351==

'''Sweet Caporal''' 
A [http://www.adclassix.com/ads/55sweetcaporal.htm brand] of cigarette.

'''came for me''' 
On page 69 Erlys left this note: "I'll be back for her when I can."

'''"French flat"''' 
A category then used for buildings that fell between single-family dwellings and boardinghouses - see here#REDIRECT [[http://www.arch.columbia.edu/hp/studio/2005-2006/resources/resources_primary1.html]]

'''Pitti Palace''' 
Late fifteenth century Florentine palace, possibly designed by Brunelleschi.

'''''grattacielo''''' 
Italian: skyscraper.

'''Bria''' 
Daughter of Erlys Mills and Luca Zombini.

==Page 352==

'''''Little Nemo''''' 
A full-page color cartoon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo_in_Slumberland Wikipedia] by Winsor McCay, started on October 15, 1905. Published in the New York Herald until 1911.

'''melted icebox ice''' 
(How nasty would this have been?)

'''majolica''' 
Tin-glazed earthenware [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majolica wikipedia]

'''Fletcher's Castoria''' 
A patent medicine composed of senna, sodium bicarbonate, essence of wintergreen, taraxicum, sugar and water, used as a laxative. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoria Wikipedia entry].

'''three-cent pieces''' 
The U.S. minted three-cent coins until 1889.

'''''La Forza del Destino''''' 
Literally, the "force of destiny." An opera by Verdi [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Forza_del_Destino wikipedia]

'''''cretino''''' 
Cretin

==Page 353==

'''Luigi Denza''' 
Luigi Denza (2846-1922) was an Italian composer. In 1898, he moved to London and became a professor of singing at at the Royal Academy of Music.
Among the hundreds of songs he wrote, the most popular one was the Neapolitan song (1880) ''Funiculi, Funicula'' (cf 349). [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Denza Wikipedia].

'''Psyche knot''' 
The knot in which Psyche kept her hair, as shown in ads for White Rock mineral water during this time frame. [http://www.whiterocking.org/pcw.html Pictures here].

==Page 354==

'''''"bella"''''' 
sweetheart; beauty.

'''Friuli''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friuli Border area of Italy,Austria and Slovenia, N. of Trieste]. Its main provinces are Udine, Gorizia, Pordenone and Trieste. It's not part of the South Tyrol. It's been part of post WWII disputes with Jugoslavia and it's subject to still ongoing polemics on the conflicts between antifascist groups and local fastist-supporting population (s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foibe Foibe])

'''donkey salami''' 
Italian sausage-makers do use donkey meat; look for ''salame d'asino'' or ''mortadella di asino.'' It is not imported into the U.S. 

From Robert Musil's ''The Man Without Qualitites'' p. 939 of the 1995 translation by S. Wilkins. Musil and his lead character Ulrich had both served in the Austro-Hungarian army.

:''Considering the window display of German intellect, Ulrich was reminded of an old army joke: "Mortadella." This had been the nickname of an unpopular general, after the popular Italian sausage, and if anyone wondered why, the answer was: "Part pig, part donkey."''

'''like Austria, with gestures''' 
:One of the finest news films ever shown on TV concerned a regional election in this part of Italy. The candidates spoke excellent German but used their arms and hands in a highly un-German way.

'''platinum black''' 
"a fine black powder of platinum; used as a catalyst in chemical reactions" [http://www.answers.com/topic/platinum-black cite]

This whole paragraph describes what amounts to a Black Hole, from which not even light can emerge.

:No. It describes the "Black Body Radiation" discovered around 1900. It's quite different from a black hole. Of course, the latter is much much more popular. In physics a black body is an ideal body that absorbs without reflection all of the electromagnetic radiation (light is one of them) incident on its surface. Since in here there is no extreme gravity involved but blackness, with the author's engineering educational background and with the topic of "light" frequently discussed in the book, and Zombini here is talking about light reflection, clearly reference to black body radiation is more appropriate. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbody_radiation Wikipedia].

'''''affondato, vero?''''' 
Italian for "Sunk, isn'it?" as in the battleship game.

'''bloody horror shows''' 
A reference to the Grand Guignol theater in Paris, which opened in 1897, known for its gory shows. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_guignol Wikipedia entry].

==Page 355==

'''Doubles the image...''' 
Suggestive of quantum doubling, i.e. universe splitting in one version/solution of the Multiverse problem.

'''''capisci?''''' 
Italian: you understand?

'''Houdini''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini Wikipedia]

'''''Porca miseria''''' 
All-purpose Italian expletive, not too crude. Translates into English as damn!

'''Teatro Malibran''' 
The 900-seat theather was built in 1677 for drama, opera and classical concerts. It was originally named Teatro di San Giovanni Crisostomo and later changed to Teatro Malibran to honor Maria Malibran, a well-known soprano of the early 19th century. During its long history the theather has been refurbished and rennovated numerous times, most recently in 2001. It is a beautiful landmark theather. It's doubtful Teatro Malibran is a proper venue for magic shows. For the beautiful indoor and outdoor pictures [http://www.noehill.com/med/med2002/malibran.asp Teatro Malibran].

==Page 356==

'''''Stupendica''''' 
Example of Pynchon's marvelous ship names (e.g. ''USS Scaffold'' and ''Susannah Squaducci'' in ''V.''); perhaps a play on ''Titanic''.

'''Chinese Gong Effect''' 
???

'''East Rumelian''' 
East Rumelia was an autonomous Bulgarian province, fomerly an Ottoman dependency south of the Balkans. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 it was to be ruled by Turkey but with a Christian prince as part of a complex territorial power-balance agreeable to all Powers at the 1878 Congress of Berlin. Interestingly, an area in which the Glagolitic alphabet was propounded (see P.252).

'''Erlys remembered''' 
(Why not Dally?)

==Page 357==

'''Bert Snidell''' 
Bert Snidell was first mentioned on page 75.

'''Hindoo shuffle''' 
Hindoo, or Hindu, shuffle is one of numerous ways of shuffling playing cards. For a description [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuffling_playing_cards#Hindu_shuffle Wikipedia].

'''French drop''' 
A well-known vanishing act of a small object involving sleight of hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drop Wikipedia].

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2008-03-01T05:49:34Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 324 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
Just a literal translation of the English phrase. The Spanish equivalent could be "Tengo que salir cagando de aquí" ("I have to go shitting out of here").

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''Kit dreamed''' 
[http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-shall-pretend-to-know-nothing-pp-318.html Chumps of Choice] sez, "Just like Reef and Frank before him, now Kit has a conversation with his father -- though unlike the others, he does not yet know that Webb is dead."

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT, still in operation today. Founded in 1895 and claims to have served the first hamburger in the US. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

[[Image:wardenclyffe.png|thumb|right|200px]]'''trusswork tower''' 
Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower (1901 – 1917) also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early wireless telecommunications aerial tower intended for commercial wireless trans-Atlantic telephony, broadcasting, and to demonstrate the transmission of power without interconnecting wires. The core facility was never fully operational and was not completed due to economic problems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower Wikipedia]

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT, distinguished by its white sauce and claims. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry]

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Unusual imagery.
:Possibly a reference to Yeats. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

:Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general. [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml Lyrics]

:Both of these seem a stretch. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''That Göttingen Rag''' 
Reminiscent of [http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/vatican.htm The Vatican Rag] by American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer Tom Lehrer].

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsberg at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wikipedia]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==

''''North Hempstead Turnpike'''' 
New York State Route 25A. 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_25A Wikipedia]

''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

'''Sunny Jim'''
"[..] was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Jim Link]

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see." 
Maybe wings of power?

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2008-03-01T05:45:59Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 322 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
Just a literal translation of the English phrase. The Spanish equivalent could be "Tengo que salir cagando de aquí" ("I have to go shitting out of here").

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''Kit dreamed''' 
[http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-shall-pretend-to-know-nothing-pp-318.html Chumps of Choice] sez, "Just like Reef and Frank before him, now Kit has a conversation with his father -- though unlike the others, he does not yet know that Webb is dead."

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT, still in operation today. Founded in 1895 and claims to have served the first hamburger in the US. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

[[Image:wardenclyffe.png|thumb|right|200px]]'''trusswork tower''' 
Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower (1901 – 1917) also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early wireless telecommunications aerial tower intended for commercial wireless trans-Atlantic telephony, broadcasting, and to demonstrate the transmission of power without interconnecting wires. The core facility was never fully operational and was not completed due to economic problems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower Wikipedia]

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT, distinguished by its white sauce and claims. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry]

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Unusual imagery.
:Possibly a reference to Yeats. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

:Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general. [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml Lyrics]

:Both of these seem a stretch. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsberg at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wikipedia]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==

''''North Hempstead Turnpike'''' 
New York State Route 25A. 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_25A Wikipedia]

''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

'''Sunny Jim'''
"[..] was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Jim Link]

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see." 
Maybe wings of power?

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

File:Wardenclyffe.png

2008-03-01T05:45:39Z

Bleakhaus:

ATD 318-335

2008-03-01T05:44:15Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 322 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
Just a literal translation of the English phrase. The Spanish equivalent could be "Tengo que salir cagando de aquí" ("I have to go shitting out of here").

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''Kit dreamed''' 
[http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-shall-pretend-to-know-nothing-pp-318.html Chumps of Choice] sez, "Just like Reef and Frank before him, now Kit has a conversation with his father -- though unlike the others, he does not yet know that Webb is dead."

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT, still in operation today. Founded in 1895 and claims to have served the first hamburger in the US. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

[[Image:wardenclyffe.jpg|thumb|right|200px]]'''trusswork tower''' 
Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower (1901 – 1917) also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early wireless telecommunications aerial tower intended for commercial wireless trans-Atlantic telephony, broadcasting, and to demonstrate the transmission of power without interconnecting wires. The core facility was never fully operational and was not completed due to economic problems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower Wikipedia]

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT, distinguished by its white sauce and claims. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry]

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Unusual imagery.
:Possibly a reference to Yeats. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

:Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general. [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml Lyrics]

:Both of these seem a stretch. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsberg at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wikipedia]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==

''''North Hempstead Turnpike'''' 
New York State Route 25A. 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_25A Wikipedia]

''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

'''Sunny Jim'''
"[..] was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Jim Link]

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see." 
Maybe wings of power?

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2008-03-01T04:47:16Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 324 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
Just a literal translation of the English phrase. The Spanish equivalent could be "Tengo que salir cagando de aquí" ("I have to go shitting out of here").

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''Kit dreamed''' 
[http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-shall-pretend-to-know-nothing-pp-318.html Chumps of Choice] sez, "Just like Reef and Frank before him, now Kit has a conversation with his father -- though unlike the others, he does not yet know that Webb is dead."

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT, still in operation today. Founded in 1895 and claims to have served the first hamburger in the US. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT, distinguished by its white sauce and claims. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry]

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Unusual imagery.
:Possibly a reference to Yeats. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

:Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general. [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml Lyrics]

:Both of these seem a stretch. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsberg at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wikipedia]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==

''''North Hempstead Turnpike'''' 
New York State Route 25A. 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_25A Wikipedia]

''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

'''Sunny Jim'''
"[..] was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Jim Link]

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see." 
Maybe wings of power?

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2008-03-01T04:44:36Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 323 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
Just a literal translation of the English phrase. The Spanish equivalent could be "Tengo que salir cagando de aquí" ("I have to go shitting out of here").

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''Kit dreamed''' 
[http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-shall-pretend-to-know-nothing-pp-318.html Chumps of Choice] sez, "Just like Reef and Frank before him, now Kit has a conversation with his father -- though unlike the others, he does not yet know that Webb is dead."

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT, still in operation today. Founded in 1895 and claims to have served the first hamburger in the US. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT, distinguished by its white sauce and claims. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry]

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Unusual imagery.
:Possibly a reference to Yeats. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

:Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general. [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml Lyrics]

:Both of these seem a stretch. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsbert at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wiki]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==

''''North Hempstead Turnpike'''' 
New York State Route 25A. 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_25A Wikipedia]

''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

'''Sunny Jim'''
"[..] was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Jim Link]

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see." 
Maybe wings of power?

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2008-03-01T04:33:11Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 323 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
Just a literal translation of the English phrase. The Spanish equivalent could be "Tengo que salir cagando de aquí" ("I have to go shitting out of here").

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''Kit dreamed''' 
[http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-shall-pretend-to-know-nothing-pp-318.html Chumps of Choice] sez, "Just like Reef and Frank before him, now Kit has a conversation with his father -- though unlike the others, he does not yet know that Webb is dead."

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT, still in operation today. Founded in 1895 and claims to have served the first hamburger in the US. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT, distinguished by its white sauce and claims. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry]

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Another Yeats reference for Pynchon. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

In the poem, Yeats (who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) talks about anarchy, falcons, a "shape with lion body and the head of a man" with a "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun", and of course, the Second Coming. You should be reading it right now. [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming "The Second Coming"]

"Critic Yvor Winters has observed, "…we must face the fact that Yeats' attitude toward the beast is different from ours: we may find the beast terrifying, but Yeats finds him satisfying – he is Yeats' judgment upon all that we regard as civilized. Yeats approves of this kind of brutality.""

There also seems to be a lot of [http://www.sfu.ca/~curtis/CornellYeats Yeatslove] goin' on at Cornell, though the extent of the relationship between the University and Yeats during our author's attendence isn't known.

------------

Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general:

From [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml "Glow-Worm"]

Glow little glow-worm, fly of fire
Glow like an incandescent wire
Glow for the female of the species
Turn on the AC and the DC
This night could use a little brightnin'
Light up you little ol' bug of lightnin'
When you gotta glow, you gotta glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow

Glow little glow-worm, glow and glimmer
Swim through the sea of night, little swimmer
Thou aeronautical boll weevil
Illuminate yon woods primeval
See how the shadows deep and darken
You and your chick should get to sparkin'
I got a gal that I love so
Glow little glow-worm, glow

glow worms are the larvae of a large mosquito-like fly that have a very unusual lifestyle. 
Glow worms
[http://maguires.com/glow_worms/about_worms.htm]

Also, the word "glimmering" refers to feeble, faint or intermittent light, supporting the glow-worm reading.....probably not referring to a "brazen winged beast."

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsbert at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wiki]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==

''''North Hempstead Turnpike'''' 
New York State Route 25A. 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_25A Wikipedia]

''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

'''Sunny Jim'''
"[..] was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Jim Link]

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see." 
Maybe wings of power?

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2008-03-01T04:10:36Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 322 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
Just a literal translation of the English phrase. The Spanish equivalent could be "Tengo que salir cagando de aquí" ("I have to go shitting out of here").

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''Kit dreamed''' 
[http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-shall-pretend-to-know-nothing-pp-318.html Chumps of Choice] sez, "Just like Reef and Frank before him, now Kit has a conversation with his father -- though unlike the others, he does not yet know that Webb is dead."

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, CT, still in operation today. Founded in 1895 and claims to have served the first hamburger in the US. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry] Many maintain that pizza as we know it was first served in New Haven--that is, if you consider something with white sauce and clams a "pizza." 
I believe that "pizza as we know it" was first served in Italy, probably Pisa.
:It has the reputation of coming from Naples, though, which is way to the south of Pisa and doesn't always speak the same language.
 (sorry, but in fact Pisa has nothing to do with Pizza:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pizza])

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Another Yeats reference for Pynchon. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

In the poem, Yeats (who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) talks about anarchy, falcons, a "shape with lion body and the head of a man" with a "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun", and of course, the Second Coming. You should be reading it right now. [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming "The Second Coming"]

"Critic Yvor Winters has observed, "…we must face the fact that Yeats' attitude toward the beast is different from ours: we may find the beast terrifying, but Yeats finds him satisfying – he is Yeats' judgment upon all that we regard as civilized. Yeats approves of this kind of brutality.""

There also seems to be a lot of [http://www.sfu.ca/~curtis/CornellYeats Yeatslove] goin' on at Cornell, though the extent of the relationship between the University and Yeats during our author's attendence isn't known.

------------

Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general:

From [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml "Glow-Worm"]

Glow little glow-worm, fly of fire
Glow like an incandescent wire
Glow for the female of the species
Turn on the AC and the DC
This night could use a little brightnin'
Light up you little ol' bug of lightnin'
When you gotta glow, you gotta glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow

Glow little glow-worm, glow and glimmer
Swim through the sea of night, little swimmer
Thou aeronautical boll weevil
Illuminate yon woods primeval
See how the shadows deep and darken
You and your chick should get to sparkin'
I got a gal that I love so
Glow little glow-worm, glow

glow worms are the larvae of a large mosquito-like fly that have a very unusual lifestyle. 
Glow worms
[http://maguires.com/glow_worms/about_worms.htm]

Also, the word "glimmering" refers to feeble, faint or intermittent light, supporting the glow-worm reading.....probably not referring to a "brazen winged beast."

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsbert at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wiki]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==

''''North Hempstead Turnpike'''' 
New York State Route 25A. 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_25A Wikipedia]

''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

'''Sunny Jim'''
"[..] was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Jim Link]

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see." 
Maybe wings of power?

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2008-02-29T23:38:54Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 320 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of aquí''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
Just a literal translation of the English phrase. The Spanish equivalent could be "Tengo que salir cagando de aquí" ("I have to go shitting out of here").

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''Kit dreamed''' 
[http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/03/we-shall-pretend-to-know-nothing-pp-318.html Chumps of Choice] sez, "Just like Reef and Frank before him, now Kit has a conversation with his father -- though unlike the others, he does not yet know that Webb is dead."

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch, located at 261-263 Crown Street, New Haven, CT, and still operating today. Founded in 1895, Louis' Lunch is widely believed to be where the hamburger was first served, although without ketchup or mustard. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

The origins of the hamburger are widely disputed, much depending on how you define a hamburger. But it is widely agreed that the term has its origins in Hamburg, Germany.

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry] Many maintain that pizza as we know it was first served in New Haven--that is, if you consider something with white sauce and clams a "pizza." 
I believe that "pizza as we know it" was first served in Italy, probably Pisa.
:It has the reputation of coming from Naples, though, which is way to the south of Pisa and doesn't always speak the same language.
 (sorry, but in fact Pisa has nothing to do with Pizza:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pizza])

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Another Yeats reference for Pynchon. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

In the poem, Yeats (who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) talks about anarchy, falcons, a "shape with lion body and the head of a man" with a "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun", and of course, the Second Coming. You should be reading it right now. [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming "The Second Coming"]

"Critic Yvor Winters has observed, "…we must face the fact that Yeats' attitude toward the beast is different from ours: we may find the beast terrifying, but Yeats finds him satisfying – he is Yeats' judgment upon all that we regard as civilized. Yeats approves of this kind of brutality.""

There also seems to be a lot of [http://www.sfu.ca/~curtis/CornellYeats Yeatslove] goin' on at Cornell, though the extent of the relationship between the University and Yeats during our author's attendence isn't known.

------------

Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general:

From [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml "Glow-Worm"]

Glow little glow-worm, fly of fire
Glow like an incandescent wire
Glow for the female of the species
Turn on the AC and the DC
This night could use a little brightnin'
Light up you little ol' bug of lightnin'
When you gotta glow, you gotta glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow

Glow little glow-worm, glow and glimmer
Swim through the sea of night, little swimmer
Thou aeronautical boll weevil
Illuminate yon woods primeval
See how the shadows deep and darken
You and your chick should get to sparkin'
I got a gal that I love so
Glow little glow-worm, glow

glow worms are the larvae of a large mosquito-like fly that have a very unusual lifestyle. 
Glow worms
[http://maguires.com/glow_worms/about_worms.htm]

Also, the word "glimmering" refers to feeble, faint or intermittent light, supporting the glow-worm reading.....probably not referring to a "brazen winged beast."

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsbert at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wiki]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==

''''North Hempstead Turnpike'''' 
New York State Route 25A. 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_25A Wikipedia]

''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

'''Sunny Jim'''
"[..] was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Jim Link]

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see." 
Maybe wings of power?

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2007-09-16T18:59:05Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 318 */ extraneous details

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of acqui''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
Started 10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch, located at 261-263 Crown Street, New Haven, CT, and still operating today. Founded in 1895, Louis' Lunch is widely believed to be where the hamburger was first served, although without ketchup or mustard. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

The origins of the hamburger are widely disputed, much depending on how you define a hamburger. But it is widely agreed that the term has its origins in Hamburg, Germany.

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry] Many maintain that pizza as we know it was first served in New Haven--that is, if you consider something with white sauce and clams a "pizza." 
I believe that "pizza as we know it" was first served in Italy, probably Pisa.
:It has the reputation of coming from Naples, though, which is way to the south of Pisa and doesn't always speak the same language.
 (sorry, but in fact Pisa has nothing to do with Pizza:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pizza])

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Another Yeats reference for Pynchon. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

In the poem, Yeats (who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) talks about anarchy, falcons, a "shape with lion body and the head of a man" with a "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun", and of course, the Second Coming. You should be reading it right now. [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming "The Second Coming"]

"Critic Yvor Winters has observed, "…we must face the fact that Yeats' attitude toward the beast is different from ours: we may find the beast terrifying, but Yeats finds him satisfying – he is Yeats' judgment upon all that we regard as civilized. Yeats approves of this kind of brutality.""

There also seems to be a lot of [http://www.sfu.ca/~curtis/CornellYeats Yeatslove] goin' on at Cornell, though the extent of the relationship between the University and Yeats during our author's attendence isn't known.

------------

Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general:

From [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml "Glow-Worm"]

Glow little glow-worm, fly of fire
Glow like an incandescent wire
Glow for the female of the species
Turn on the AC and the DC
This night could use a little brightnin'
Light up you little ol' bug of lightnin'
When you gotta glow, you gotta glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow

Glow little glow-worm, glow and glimmer
Swim through the sea of night, little swimmer
Thou aeronautical boll weevil
Illuminate yon woods primeval
See how the shadows deep and darken
You and your chick should get to sparkin'
I got a gal that I love so
Glow little glow-worm, glow

glow worms are the larvae of a large mosquito-like fly that have a very unusual lifestyle. 
Glow worms
[http://maguires.com/glow_worms/about_worms.htm]

Also, the word "glimmering" refers to feeble, faint or intermittent light, supporting the glow-worm reading.....probably not referring to a "brazen winged beast."

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsbert at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wiki]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==
''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see."

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2007-09-16T18:55:01Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 318 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Tengo que get el fuck out of acqui''' 
"I have to get the fuck out of here."

'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].
:The Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) actually started on 8 February,1904 (11:50 pm Manchuria Ttme; 12:20 am, 9 February, Tokyo time) with a Japanese sneak, naval night-attack on the Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, Manchuria. The war was then officially declared by the Japanese Government on 10 February, 1904, long after the first Port Arthur Naval Battle had ended in Japan's advantage.

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch, located at 261-263 Crown Street, New Haven, CT, and still operating today. Founded in 1895, Louis' Lunch is widely believed to be where the hamburger was first served, although without ketchup or mustard. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

The origins of the hamburger are widely disputed, much depending on how you define a hamburger. But it is widely agreed that the term has its origins in Hamburg, Germany.

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry] Many maintain that pizza as we know it was first served in New Haven--that is, if you consider something with white sauce and clams a "pizza." 
I believe that "pizza as we know it" was first served in Italy, probably Pisa.
:It has the reputation of coming from Naples, though, which is way to the south of Pisa and doesn't always speak the same language.
 (sorry, but in fact Pisa has nothing to do with Pizza:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pizza])

'''at the far edges of his visual field, a glimmering winged object''' 
Another Yeats reference for Pynchon. Yeats: "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)]

In the poem, Yeats (who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) talks about anarchy, falcons, a "shape with lion body and the head of a man" with a "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun", and of course, the Second Coming. You should be reading it right now. [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming "The Second Coming"]

"Critic Yvor Winters has observed, "…we must face the fact that Yeats' attitude toward the beast is different from ours: we may find the beast terrifying, but Yeats finds him satisfying – he is Yeats' judgment upon all that we regard as civilized. Yeats approves of this kind of brutality.""

There also seems to be a lot of [http://www.sfu.ca/~curtis/CornellYeats Yeatslove] goin' on at Cornell, though the extent of the relationship between the University and Yeats during our author's attendence isn't known.

------------

Or the word 'glimmering' may be key in understanding that the peripheral winged object is none other than the famous firefly of the song "Glow little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer" written circa 1908 and re-recorded by Pynchon's beloved Spike Jones in 1946. In addition to the glow-worm being a glimmering winged object, the song makes multiple references to electricity and lightning, all very much in context with this section in particular and the novel in general:

From [http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/g/glowworm.shtml "Glow-Worm"]

Glow little glow-worm, fly of fire
Glow like an incandescent wire
Glow for the female of the species
Turn on the AC and the DC
This night could use a little brightnin'
Light up you little ol' bug of lightnin'
When you gotta glow, you gotta glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow

Glow little glow-worm, glow and glimmer
Swim through the sea of night, little swimmer
Thou aeronautical boll weevil
Illuminate yon woods primeval
See how the shadows deep and darken
You and your chick should get to sparkin'
I got a gal that I love so
Glow little glow-worm, glow

glow worms are the larvae of a large mosquito-like fly that have a very unusual lifestyle. 
Glow worms
[http://maguires.com/glow_worms/about_worms.htm]

Also, the word "glimmering" refers to feeble, faint or intermittent light, supporting the glow-worm reading.....probably not referring to a "brazen winged beast."

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsbert at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wiki]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
How many colors are necessary to color a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color? The theorem was first stated as a conjecture in the mid-1800s; a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem The Wikipedia entry] gives an account of the 1976 proof and the controversy surrounding it. 
The conjecture, now theorem, is that you can color any map in a plane with four colors. Regions are adjacent if they share a boundary but not if they share a single point. The Four Corners is familiar in ''AtD,'' so paint New Mexico red, Arizona green, and Utah beige. What color does Colorado have to be? Green works (no boundary with Arizona), so this map takes only three colors. But imagine the state of New Colozontah, a one-mile circle centered at the Corners; no matter how you assign the first three colors, now you have to have a fourth. And you can't draw a map that takes five, not without cheating (e.g., folding the paper).

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==
''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness. 
I read this as a spoof of an anti-fungal or anti-biotic product like Neosporin (as "Smegmo" is a spoof on Crisco).

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see."

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''headquarters in Pearl Street''' 
In Manhattan's financial district; on [http://www.mustseenewyork.com/maps/nyc-lower-manhattan-hotels.html this street map] it runs northeast from the ferry terminals. [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nycolonial/index.html Fraunces Tavern] (built 1719) stands at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 318-335

2007-05-11T04:13:06Z

Bleakhaus: /* Page 319 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 318==
'''Yale... how little the place was about studying and learning''' 
Pynchon's sustained attack on Yale follows his treatment of Harvard in GR -- "'Harvard's there for other reasons. The "educating" part of it is just sort of a front'" (GR 193).
:I wonder if Pynchon's skewering of the Ivies is tied to both his admiration for ''The Education of Henry Adams'' (Adams said that at Harvard, he got little from his professors and less from his classmates) and Pynchon's autodidacticism. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 20:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

'''Kabbalah''' 
Jewish mysticism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Wikipedia]. Also see p.227: 'Kabbalist Tree of Life' tattooed 'below Madame Eskimoff's bared nape.'

'''latent in the Maxwell Field Equations years before Hertz found them''' 
Physics lore says that Maxwell's Equations, written to illuminate processes in fairly slow systems, were at first regarded as having fantastical solutions that predicted undetectable waves in the æther. No one until Hertz connected the equations with observed electromagnetic vibrations (and ultimately with light waves).

'''Hertz''' 
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), German physicist, born at Hamburg, studied under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and ultimately became professor at Bonn in 1899. In 1887 he realized Maxwell's predictions, by his fundamental discovery of electromagnetic waves, which, excepting wavelength, behave like light waves. The wave frequency unit, ''hertz'', cycle per second, was named after him in 1930. A crater at the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern rim, was named in his honor. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Hertz]].

'''Shunkichi Kimura''' 
Shunkichi Kimura is mentioned in [http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ve3m-snd/japan.html this] article on Tesla's relationship with Japan. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]].

'''war with Russia''' 
10 February 1904. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia].
:The Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) actually started on 8 February,1904 (11:50 pm Manchuria Ttme; 12:20 am, 9 February, Tokyo time) with a Japanese sneak, naval night-attack on the Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, Manchuria. The war was then officially declared by the Japanese Government on 10 February, 1904, long after the first Port Arthur Naval Battle had ended in Japan's advantage.

'''Gibbs had died''' 
28 April 1903. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs Wikipedia] Pynchon's interest in Gibbs may stem from Gibbs's work in thermodynamics, particularly entropy, a theme that pervades Pynchon's work.

'''high-hat''' 
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/high-hat High-hat] is an adjective in this context and so means snobbish; haughty.

==Page 319==

'''"he [would later ask] why did I want ''that'' so much?"''' 
Similar to a comment by Siegel in his Playboy article: (to paraphrase from memory) Pynchon was disappointed that he was not admitted to a fraternity at Cornell, but he lacked the crude sociability for that.

'''eyes in leafy ambuscade''' 
eyes behind a bush (with leaves) waiting in [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ambush ambush], (a bit of a pun) in the sense of the hiding place used for the surprise attack (no surprise attack in this context).

==Page 320==

'''scout''' 
In British universities, a housekeeper/valet. At Yale too?

'''Proximus''' 
Latin; means nearest, closest, next. It also is the name of, among many other things, a computer code performing a non-orthogonal matrix transform based on recursive partitioning of a data set.

'''Quincke''' 
Georg Hermann Quincke (1834-1924) was a German physicist. He was a physics professor at the Univeristy of Berlin between 1865 and 1872. As from 1875 he was the professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg until he retired in 1907. One of his many research works was to investigate experimentally the reflection of light, especially from the metallic surfaces. (Not sure whether this was done at Berlin or Heidelberg.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hermann_Quincke Wikipedia].

==Page 321==

==Page 322==

'''Moriarty's''' 
The unofficial Yale club, founded circa 1861, nicknamed Mory's, incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song" about 1909. The "Louie" in the song is Louis Linder, not to be confused with next entry.

'''Louis Lassen''' 
Founder of Louis' Lunch, located at 261-263 Crown Street, New Haven, CT, and still operating today. Founded in 1895, Louis' Lunch is widely believed to be where the hamburger was first served, although without ketchup or mustard. [http://www.louislunch.com/ Website]. 

The origins of the hamburger are widely disputed, much depending on how you define a hamburger. But it is widely agreed that the term has its origins in Hamburg, Germany.

'''West Rock''' 
One of two prominent natural features near New Haven, CT. Reported to have been the location of a cave where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I officials who presided over the execution of Charles I] took refuge when the Restoration reversed their political fortunes. West Rock is also the subject of [http://www.arttimesjournal.com/art/reviews/04church_frederic_copy.jpg a well known painting by Frederick Church] and sits over today's Wilbur Cross Parkway.

'''ten years before''' 
The meeting between Vibe and Vanderjuice in Chicago in 1892.
:1893?

==Page 323==

'''"apizza"''' 
A style of pizza common in New Haven, CT. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apizza Wikipedia entry] Many maintain that pizza as we know it was first served in New Haven--that is, if you consider something with white sauce and clams a "pizza." 
I believe that "pizza as we know it" was first served in Italy, probably Pisa.
:It has the reputation of coming from Naples, though, which is way to the south of Pisa and doesn't always speak the same language.

==Page 324==

'''P.G. Tait on Quaternions''' 
Peter Guthrie Tait, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, wrote two books on Quaternions, "An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions" and "Introduction to Quaternions"

''''lamp' this''' 
"Look at this" ; "Check this out".

'''Grassman's ''Ausdehnungslehre''''' 
A treatise on the foundations of linear algebra (including vector spaces) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann Hermann Grassmann].
:Literally, ''Ausdehnungslehre'' means Theory of Extension.

But in context, the statement that "Grassmann's ''Ausdehnungslehre'' can be extended to any number of dimensions you like" indicates that we are talking about a mathematical theory, not a book. The word Ausdehnungslehre has actually been borrowed in English, but the subject is more often referred to as "exterior algebra" or "algebra of the exterior product." It relates to an antisymmetric operator that acts on "differential forms." It is definitely a Vectorist pursuit.

'''Dr. Hilbert''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert.html David Hilbert] (1862-1943), German mathematician. Hilbert's work in integral equations in about 1909 led directly to 20th-century research in functional analysis (the branch of mathematics in which functions are studied collectively). This work also established the basis for his work on infinite-dimensional space, later called Hilbert space, a concept that is useful in mathematical analysis and quantum mechanics. He studied mathematics at the University of Königsber and received his doctorate in 1885. One of Hilbert's friends was Minkowski who also was a doctoral student at Königsberg. He became professor at Königsberg (1893-1895) and Göttingen (1895 to retirement), made important contributions to the theory of numbers, the theory of invariants and the application of integral equation to physical problems. His work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid.

'''Minkowski''' 
[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html Hermann Minkowski] (1864-1909), German mathematician. He was born near Kovna, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to German parents. When Minkowski was eight the family returned to Germany and settled in Königsberg. He entered the University of Königsbert at 1880 and became close friend with Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1885. He was professor at Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich (where Einstein was his student), and Göttengen. He wrote on the theory of numbers and on space and time (1909). Minkowski developed a new view of space and time, and laid the mathematical foundation of Einstein's the Theory of Relativity.

'''Spectral Theory''' 
Introduced by Hilbert. In mathematics, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory Spectral Theory] is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix.

'''''infinite'' dimensions''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space Hilbert space] can be of infinite dimensions.
In Pynchon's paramorphoscope, the physics of 1900 (the mathematics revealed multiple dimensions beyond the 4 of space and time) is concerned with the same issues as the physics of 2000 (in which string theory requires multiple dimensions). The relation of physics and mathematics to centers of political and economic power are echoes as well, here drawn together in Kit's life.

'''Eigenheit''''' 
A term used in some of David Hilbert's mathematical and logical systems, it appears to have several disputed meanings, including something like "peculiarities" or "unique values or characterizations" (eigenheiten) [http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Eigenvector].

But Eigenheit also means :"Own-ness" or "Self-Ownership" [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego9.html], a concept of the German individualist-anarchist Max Stirner (Johann Caspar Schmidt)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner], an issue of real concern to Kit, both in his immediate situation vis a vis Scarsdale Vibe, and perhaps also because of Stirner's radical individualist concept of trade union activity.

'''Hamburg Amerika Line''''' 
Transatlantic shipping company established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_America_Line Wiki]. By 1872 the company was making weekly passages to New York from Hamburg via Southampton.

==Page 325==

'''problem-set''' 
A set of physics problems to be worked out as homework.

'''th' Four-Color Problem's just a Stu-dent prank''' 
The four color problem is a well-known problem concerning the minimum number of colors necessary to color regions on a map so that no adjacent regions have the same color. First stated in the mid 1800's, a number of faulty or incomplete proofs were published around the turn of the century. The problem was solved, but not without reservation, in 1976 with the aid of a computer. The proof is not accepted by all mathematicians because it would be unfeasible for a human to verify by hand. Ultimately, in order to believe the proof, one has to have faith in the correctness of the compiler and hardware executing the program used for the proof.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem Wikipedia]

'''wanted to trust 'Fax''' 
Suggests that he also wanted to trust "facts." 'Fax also suggests
a copy [of his father]?

'''good skate''' 
A good guy.

==Page 326==

'''all but careened''' 
The boat is nearly turned on its side by the force of the wind. You careen a boat on purpose (on dry land) for cleaning, caulking, or repairing areas well below the waterline.

'''McKim, Mead, and White''' 
Architectural firm established by Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White. Introducing the Roman and Italian Renaissance style to public architecture and urban planning on the east coast around 1900. Asscociated with the "American Renaissance", "Beaux Arts" and the "City Beautiful" movement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim,_Mead,_and_White Wiki].

'''Granitza''' 
In various Slavic languages: boundary.

'''Curl''' 
In vector calculus, curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacian''' 
In mathematics, Laplacian, or Laplace operator, is a differential operator. It is widely used in areas of wave propagation, heat flow, electrostatics, quatum mechanic, etc. It is named after French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Laplace].)

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge near the Adriatic coastline of Croatia. The terrain is limestone karst, characterized by eroded cavities and channels.

==Page 327==

'''one day''' 
???

'''Parthian''' 
from Parthia, 'an ancient country corresponding to modern northeast Iran,however, Parthian also means "delivered in of as if in retreat", according to the American Heritage Dictionary. The use cited comes from Bret Harte, American writer about the West of this book's time: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy".

The full expression "Parthian Shot" comes from the Parthian cavalryman's ability to fire arrows over their shoulders while retreating.

'''''morra''''' 
It is a hand game played for points by two people. Both players show either one or two fingers and simultaneously call out loud the number of fingers the other player will show. A correct call wins the number of points. [http://www.frontier.net/~grifftoe/morra.html morra].

==Page 328==
''''North River jibes'''' 
In sailing, to jibe is to shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack. This means the boom, a long spar extending from the mast to hold or extend the foot of the sail, shifts from one side of the vessel to the other, since the sail is attached to it. One does not want to get hit with the boom during a jibe (kind of like getting hit by a big baseball bat): it will hurt, if not kill, you and most likely knock you out if the boat. Apparently, 'Fax jibes a lot in the North River.

==Page 329==

==Page 330==

'''Neofungoline''' 
??? Speculation: A fungo, baseball jargon (origin unknown), is a fly ball hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat, called a fungo bat. This is the only use of the word so possibly neofungoline is more Pynchon inventiveness and cleverness.

'''have that long''' 
Vibe is about 60 years old.

'''trying not to speak too carefully''' 
Cf phony Yale posing.

==Page 331==

'''forward of the stacks''' 
Preferred cabins located upwind of soot and smuts from the ship's funnels.

'''one of those negative results with resonance far beyond itself''' 
Like the Michelson-Morley experiment.

'''Grand Central Station''' 
This was called Grand Central Terminal until the "new" Grand Central Station opened in 1912, which was after this episode occurs. [http://grandcentralterminal.com/pages/getpage.aspx?id=75133219-5FAF-40D2-B946-D3A6693EFF32 History of Grand Central Station]

==Page 332==

'''how mighty are the wings we shelter beneath''' 
Wings of God, thinks Vibe. There have been hints this is not so. 
Compare p. 211, where the Rev. Lube Carnal says, "We like to think of Jeshimon as being under God's wing," to which Reef protests, "But wait a minute, God doesn't have wings—" And Carnal replies, "The God you're thinking of, maybe not. But out here, the one who looks after us, it's a kind of winged God, you see."

'''the bloodline of my enemy''' 
Interesting phrase. Not the blood of his enemy. Vibe says his own seed is cursed, and he is seeking by adoption to make the Traverse bloodline his own. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_158|"it was desire," p. 158.]]

==Page 333==

'''I didn't have my war then''' 
Vibe saying his time to fight was not 1862 but in the 1890s.

'''a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy''' 
Perhaps speaking to the furniture and hearing the echo agree with him. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

==Page 334==

'''the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah''' 
Benign, homegrown theocracy contrasted with deranged foreign theocracy.

'''Cooper Square''' 
Cooper Square where Fourth and Third Avenue merge into the Bowery in New York City.

'''Tenderloin''' 
A district of vice in New York City (''American Heritage Dictionary''). The West Side from about 27th Street to about 62nd Street. Gave its name to a very funny musical (1960; music by Jerry Bock, book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick).

'''Nellie Noonan or Anna Held''' 
Anna Held was a popular stage performer of the 1890s and 1900s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Held wikipedia]. Nellie Noonan may be a reference to the title character in ''Little Nellie Kelly'', a George M. Cohan musical made into a film starring Judy Garland in 1940 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032718/ imdb]), but Cohan wrote the musical in 1922.

==Page 335==

'''the Wilderness''' 
A Civil War battle in May 1864, just before the battle of Cold Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness Wikipedia]

'''Cold Harbor''' 
Where Foley Walker, acting as Civil War Substitute, "took a Reb bullet" for Scarsdale Vibe - see p.100/101.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}