Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

ATD 792-820

2007-01-18T17:42:09Z

Gkleck: /* Page 794 */

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

==Page XX==

'''Sample entry''' 
Please format like this.

==Page 794==

'''communicate with the explorer Peary, then in the Arctic'''
Robert Peary did not even leave New York City at the start of his polar expedition until July 6, 1908, 6 days '''after''' the Tunguska Event of 6-30-08, and did not reach Ellesmere Island until the summer of 1909.

'''Semipalatinsk''' 
Town on the Irtysh River, a ''long'' way southwest of Vanavara. Soviet nuclear tests were administered from here.

'''''obstanovka''''' 
Russian: situation.

==Page 795==

'''''Zdorovo!''''' 
Russian: ''hel''lo!

'''Neutral Moresnet''' 
Tiny "country" between Belgium and Germany; existed 1816-1919; see, oh ''do'' see, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_Moresnet Wikipedia entry.]

'''''tchudak''''' 
Now transliterated ''chudak.'' Russian: crank.

'''Kiakhta''' 
Or ''Kyakhta,'' only two syllables. Town on Russian (Buriat)-Mongolian border south of Lake Baikal, a center of Russian trade with China.

'''Not even Russian army does that!''' 
And it cost them dearly in 1914 when intercepted "clear" radio traffic helped the Germans crush them at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1914_Battle_of_Tannenberg Battle of Tannenberg.]

==Page 796==

'''By dusk . . . running-lights''' 
This is deeply disturbing, and I hope it is simply my misunderstanding. Apply the description in this long paragraph to a tiny model, say a flashlight, an orange and a toothpick representing one of the mooring lines with a raisin balloon at the top. The orange rotates toward the east, so that the flashlight appears to set in the west. Which part of the system gets dark first? The text says the raisin does, the arc of the orange's shadow moving downward. But plainly the bottom end of the toothpick is shaded first and the raisin remains illuminated until last. What would move downward from the highest raisin to the orange-peel countryside? The arc of the orange's shadow at flashlight''rise'' would. Either I'm running my film backward or the Chums are . . . or Pynchon is. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 13:38, 4 January 2007 (PST)

==Page 797==

'''upriver from Vanavara''' 
"Ground zero" of the Event was 40 miles north of Vanavara.

'''"simultaneity" . . . Special Relativity''' 
Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905) refutes the idea that two observers seeing two events can ever agree on whether the events were simultaneous. Adopters of the theory (and in 1908 they were all ''early'' adopters) would be asking one another if it applied to this phenomenon.

'''the error of the seismograph recordings . . . singularity''' 
"Error" doesn't mean mistake or wrongness. It measures the variability within each instrument; every measurement comes with a plus-or-minus figure. If the Event happened instantaneously, each of the charts would record it as a more or less spread-out peak. The energy released in a process is calculated from the area under the curve of intensity versus time; to get the power (rate of energy release), divide the energy by the duration of the process. Even though he states the math wrongly, Vanderjuice suspects the seismographs of the world have responded to a titanic release of energy that took place in essentially no time at all, so that power = energy divided by zero. When physicists see a ''real'' process apparently demanding division by zero, they call it a singularity and go looking for an explanation. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 13:38, 4 January 2007 (PST)

'''Circassian slave''' 
Common figure in European literature about the "Lustful Turk." Circassia is a region in the Caucasus.

==Page 798==

'''''mala vita''''' 
Italian: evil life.

==Page 799==

'''Glagolitic alphabet''' 
See excellent annotation to [[ATD_243-272#Page_252|page 252]].

==Page 800==

'''Irredentism''' 
A policy appealing to the idea that "our" lands are unredeemed, i.e., ruled by some outsider, and must be brought into our domain. See annotation to "Eurasia Irredenta" ([[ATD_748-767#Page_761|page 761).]]

==Page 801==

'''unprovided for in the future tense of any language''' 
I.e., we have no simple way to describe future events in a chaotic system. You can't say that Chinese butterfly '''will''' cause a windstorm in Brazil.

'''High susceptibility to primordial variables''' 
Chaos theorists talk about "extreme sensitivity to initial conditions."

==Page 802==

'''croakers''' 
Doctors.

'''Mariahilf''' 
The Sixth District of Vienna, known as a shopping district.

==Page 803==

'''midinettes''' 
???

'''Facharbeiter''' 
German: technician, specialist.

==Page 804==

'''eleven''' 
Vienna is 86 degrees west of the Event, more or less. Converting longitude to time at 15 degrees = 1 hour, we get a time difference of 3 hours 44 minutes. At 7:17 a.m. Event time, it was 3:33 a.m. in Vienna. Now, at 11:00 p.m. the same day, Vienna time, it is 19 hours and 27 minutes after the event. The atmospheric effect has propagated west (possibly against the high-level winds?) from Siberia to Central Europe in quite a short time. All these numbers are rough!

==Page 805==

'''prepare them against the day''' 
Here the phrase means "in anticipation of" or "to be ready for."

==Page 806==

'''šlivovica''' 
One of the spellings of this word for plum brandy (also slivovica, slivovitz, etc.).

'''one to fifty million . . . mile-to-the-inch sheets''' 
Two extremes of mapmaking. A 1:50,000,000 map of the United States would fit comfortably on a page of ''AtD'' with most of Mexico and several Canadian provinces. Austria-Hungary at that scale would be about as big as your two thumbprints side by side.

The British Ordnance Survey produced a famous series of inch-to-the-mile sheets (1:63,360); the detail is about fine enough to show the left-turn lane of a city street. At this scale it would take some 200 unhandily large sheets to cover Austria-Hungary.

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

ATD 588-614

2007-01-13T21:56:12Z

Gkleck: /* Page 595 */

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

==Page 588==

'''tannery''' 
???

'''Gauss's brain''' 
After Carl Friedrich Gauss died in 1855, his brain was preserved for research purposes. To this day, it is in the possession of the University of Göttingen.

'''impervious to the wind''' 
(Attribute of tanned leather?)

'''''"Heiliger Bimbam!"''''' 
A German expression of surprise, translated elsewhere as "Holy Moly!"

'''Roentgen-ray spectacles''' 
The X-ray glasses that used to be advertised in comic books.

'''''natürlich''''' 
German: naturally.

'''rim''' 
Kit pretends to think he's referring to monocle as 'chichi' (stylish).

==Page 589==

'''Those curves . . . ''Noli me tangere''''' 
A well-turned wordplay: The operation of differentiating a curve involves drawing ''tangents'' to it at selected points. The curves in question are continuous, but the injunction ''Noli me tangere'' means you can't draw the tangents.

'''''Noli me tangere''''' 
Latin for 'don't touch me'

'''''Hausknochen''''' 
???

==Page 590==

'''Hadamard... Poussin... Prime Number Theorem''' 
???

'''patent ''Kühlbox''''' 
???

'''beleaguered subset''' 
???

'''Prime Number Theorem''' 
Gives an estimate of the number of primes less than a whole number ''n.'' For example, if ''n'' is 20 then there are nine primes less than it (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19). The Prime Number Theorem is closely related to the Riemann Hypothesis.

==Page 591==

'''prats''' 
Literally the buttocks. As a slang term, a 'prat' is an idiot.

'''''Die Nullstellen der ζ-Funktion''''' 
German: the zeroes of the ζ function. (Null = zero; Stelle = location.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function#Zeros_of_the_Riemann_zeta_function Wikipedia] on the "Zeros of the Riemann zeta-function".

'''not all that hard to prove''' 
Kit will upset the applecart if he can prove the Riemann Hypothesis; Yashmeen's research topic will shrink to triviality. (Last time I checked, no one had yet proved the hypothesis.) --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 19:37, 9 January 2007 (PST)

'''"Richard Harding Davis"''' 
Popular writer of fiction and drama, journalist/war-correspondent and a major male-role-model of his time (1864 - 1916). He was considered the model for illustrator Charles Dana Gibson's dashing Gibson man, the male equivalent of his famous Gibson Girl. He is also referenced early in Sinclair Lewis's book, ''Dodsworth'' as the example of an exciting, adventure-seeking legitimate hero. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harding_Davis Wikipedia]

'''seldom, if ever''' 
Cf p559 re Umeki!?

'''tetralatry''' 
made up from greek "tettares" (prefix -tetra) = four and "latreia" = worship

'''C. Howard Hinton''' 
Charles Howard Hinton (1853 – 1907) was a British mathematician and writer of science fiction works titled ''Scientific Romances''. He was interested in higher dimensions, particularly the fourth dimension, and is known for coining the word ''tesseract'' and for his work on methods of visualising the geometry of higher dimensions. He also had a strong interest in theosophy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Howard_Hinton Wikipedia Entry]

'''Johann K.F. Zöllner''' 
Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (1834–1882) was a German astrophysicist. Studied Photometrie and optical illusions. He insisted a fourth dimension should be considered in Physics and tried to scientifically explain spiritist phenomena.

'''vogue... 'vague'''' 
???

==Page 592==

'''upside-down triangles''' 
Also Pléiade p538. In mathematics that would be the operator ''del'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del Wikipedia]. Since pre-history and across most cultures the upside-down triangle is a symbol for the female (genitals).

'''screamingly obvious fallacy in this . . . "proof" of yours''' 
Yashmeen reacts in a slight panic to Kit's threat (page 591).

'''metallic banging'

'''"metric interval"''' 
In Euclidean (three-dimensional) space a distance is just what you think it is. In other geometrical systems the term "metric interval" is preferred as a generalized distance.

'''Prinzenstrasse and Weenderstrasse''' 
A street corner at the very center of Göttingen ([http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=g%C3%B6ttingen,+germany&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=17&ll=51.534284,9.935417&spn=0.006107,0.010793&t=h Google Maps]), "known to mathematicians here as the origin of the city of Göttingen's coordinate system".

==Page 593==

'''twenty marks''' 
???

'''''der Pistolenheld''''' 
German: the pistol hero.

'''''das Nichtharmonischestrahlenbündel''''' 
Or ''das nichtharmonische Strahlenbündel.'' German: the anharmonic pencil. A "pencil" is the set of lines passing through a point.

'''Latin... Euler''' 
???

'''''Mathematical Theory of the Top''''' 
Published in the U.S. in 1897. Compare Felix Klein and Arnold Sommerfeld, ''Über die Theorie des Kreisels,'' 4 volumes, 1897-1910.

'''Leopold Kronecker''' and '''Cantor''' 
The "monumental quarrel between Kronecker and Cantor" is also referred to as a "religious war," appropriately enough. It's based in a disagreement over the legitimacy of numbers. Kronecker held that "'the positive integers were created by God, and all else is the work of man.'" This is contradicted by "'Cantor with his ''Kontinuum'', professing an equally strong belief in just those regions, infinitely divisible, which lie ''between'' the whole numbers so demanding of all Kronecker's devotion.'"

The disagreement between the two mathematicians is reminiscent of (or does it anticipate?) the rift between Pointsman and Mexico in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. Kronecker's integers "created by God" have become a Pavlovian digital binary for Pointsman, but the two oppositions track faithfully right down to the italicized "between."

"The young statistician [Mexico] is devoted to number and to method, not table-rapping or wishful thinking. But in the domain of zero to one, not-something to something, Pointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like Mexico, survive anyplace in between. Like his master I. P. Pavlov before him, he imagines the cortex of the brain as a mosaic of tiny on/off elements.... But to Mexico belongs the domain ''between'' zero and one." [Page 55]

It should be noted, however, that the continuous number line was a modern innovation. In Greek number theory, a number is a collection of indivisible units. Irrationals, such as the square root of 2 are not numbers but "magnitudes." One is not even a number for it is not a number of units. There are no negative numbers as well. (see Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.) So Kronecker's position may be less of a crazy innovation as much as a maintenance of ancient theory.

(That last paragraph makes an excellent point. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 19:45, 9 January 2007 (PST))

'''''Kontinuum''''' 
This passage closely parallels the one about the "microcosm of Venice" on page 575.

==Page 599==

'''''Nervenklinik''''' 
German: nerve clinic. Three-dollar word for a mental hospital.

'''boundless epsilonic world''' 
???

'''Der Finsterzwerg''' 
The choice of the tavern "The Dwarf of Darkness" may have been meant as a dig at five-foot-tall Kronecker.

'''chloral hydrate''' 
A/k/a "knockout drops" a/k/a a "Mickey Finn". Hence the ''Mickifest''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloral_hydrate Wikipedia entry].

'''''Kneipe''''' 
German: dive.

'''Gauss passing to Weber a remark''' 
???

'''crisis in mathematics . . . Weierstrass functions, Cantor's continuum, Russell's inexhaustible capacity for mischief''' 
A genuine crisis as well-established ideas were challenged. Weierstrass functions have the unheard-of property that they are "continuous but nowhere differentiable." Cantor's ideas about the continuum violated a longstanding prohibition against infinite quantities. Bertrand Russell around this time was setting the cat among the pigeons by identifying paradoxes and inconsistencies in set theory and number theory.

'''"the infinite" was all but a conjuror's convenience''' 
There is a very good book relating how the infinite, between the 18th and early 20th centuries, finally found a place in mathematics: ''In Search of Infinity'' by N.Ya. Vilenkin (translated by Abe Shenitzer).

==Page 595==

'''That winter, in St. Petersburg''' 
22 Jan 1905 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_of_1905 Wikipedia]

'''Black Hundreds''' 
Anti-Semitic vigilantes.

'''Japanese won''' 
The Japanese destroyed the bulk of the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Battle of Tsushima Straight on May 27-28, 1905. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War Wikipedia]

'''Muslim rebellion''' 
???

'''the year that followed''' 
???

'''Peter and Paul Fortress''' 
At St. Petersburg, established by Peter the Great. Political prisoners were confined there from the first half of the 1700s. Conditions were notoriously harsh.

'''kazatsky''' 
A Cossack dance, stereotypical Russian behavior.

'''Waziristan''' 
???

==Page 596==

'''as-ever transcendentally interesting hair''' 
???

''''gen'''' 
Slang term for "genuine" maybe? Maybe; it means solid information.

'''a soul impaled . . . as if to bisect me''' 
Harks back to the fate of La Jarretière in ''V.''

'''Afghani dirhan''' 
An Afghani coin, more usually transliterated as "dirham". [http://ghaznavid.ancients.info/ This site] has pictures and more information.

'''Ghaznivid Empire''' 
Usually transliterated as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghaznavid_Empire Ghaznavid Empire] (Wikipedia)

'''coffee scion''' 
Coffee motif.

'''Günther von Quassel''' 
"quasseln" is a German verb, meaning roughly "to jabber"

'''less than universally respected Ludwig Boltzmann''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann Boltzmann] proposed an explanation of thermodynamics based on the statistical behaviour of atoms. Many influential colleagues at the time did not believe in the reality of atoms and thus worked to discredit Boltzmann.

==Page 597==

'''Gymnasium child''' 
A Gymnasium is a German secondary school

'''''Ach, die Zetamanie''''' 
German: Oh, the zeta-mania.

'''one measure of the chaos''' 
Cf GR on entropy?

'''Göttingen tradition''' 
???

'''statue''' 
???

'''Rathaus square''' 
The square in front of City Hall.

==Page 598==

'''Axioms of Zermelo''' 
The basic axioms of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo-Frankel_set_theory#The_axioms Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory].

'''Poincaré''' 
Henri Poincaré ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9 Wikipedia])

'''Cauchy''' 
Augustin Louis Cauchy ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Louis_Cauchy Wikipedia])

'''Whittaker and Watson''' 
A standard mathematics textbook of the time ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_and_Watson Wikipedia])

'''two point one''' 
(Cf Sondheim lyric, "A Little Night Music" [http://lynxfeather.net/nest/lyrics/nightmusic-nowlatersoon.html lyrics].)

==Page 599==

'''"What here is he ''doing?''" . . . "Obviously, we must now a duel fight."''' 
In keeping with his name (see p. 596 annotations), Günther speaks in a stage-German accent.

'''dueling-society cap''' 
Probably student corporation insignia.

'''''Liebchen''''' 
German, "sweetheart"

'''''Egal was, meine Schatze''''' 
German, "No matter what, my darling" - though "meine Schatze" is an improper femininization, which ought to be "mein Schatz".

'''''Schläger''''' 
A specialized weapon for student duels. See Wikipedia's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_fencing Academic fencing] article.

'''Krummsäbel''' 
German, "scimitar".

'''Korbrapier''' 
A rapier with a basket ("Korb" in German) like protection hilt.

'''épée''' 
A sharp-pointed duelling sword.

==Page 600==

'''Colt six-shooters''' 
I guess Kit's luggage beat him to Gottingen.

'''''Verbindung''''' 
German: connection, union. Here the student corps one belongs to.

'''upon the face of the other, ''to inscribe one's mark''''' 
In several of his movies, the actor Erich von Stroheim appeared with a nasty scar on the left side of his face. Dueling was a pastime of honor at some universities, and the sword scar was the mark of having sustained one's honor there. Special weapons, masks and inflaming treatments were employed to produce this lifelong disfigurement.

'''a Mexican tilde''' 
The wavy mark over the letter ñ in Spanish.

'''restoring moment, elastic constants''' 
???

'''wasn't going to converge . . . skipped a step . . . ''divided by zero''''' 
Kit insults Günther by pointing out blunders in the proof he gave to Yashmeen.

'''Geheimrat Hilbert''' 
German: confidential counsellor. A title of honor given to prominent civilian figures in Germany.

==Page 601==

'''''Ehrenkodex''''' 
German, "code of honor"

'''Tyrolean hats''' 
[http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=tirolerhut&btnG=Search+Images Images]

'''''Schnurrbartbinde''''' 
A device to keep one's mustache safe from entanglement when sleeping, like [http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/mm/2006/01/1137360569.70341.gif this].

'''Zeiss "Palmos Panoram"''' 
An early panoramic camera, mentioned in the 1911 Britannica's [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Photography Photography] article.

'''''"Auf die Mensur!"''''' 
German, "to the duel"

'''Andaman Islands''' 
[http://www.openencyclopedia.net/index.php/Andaman_Islands Here]'s a mention of tattooing practices in the Andaman Islands

'''Stephanie du Motel... group-theory godfather Évariste Galois''' 
Évariste Galois died in a duel at the age of 20. Though much confusion surrounds the affair, it is suspected that he provoked the duel after being rejected by one Stéphanie-Felice du Motel. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evariste_Galois#Final_days Wikipedia])

==Page 602==

'''young Ouspensky''' 
Peter D. Ouspensky (1878-1947), Russian mystic and philosopher, author of ''The Fourth Dimension'', appropriate to Pynchon's themes in ''ATD''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Uspensky Wikipedia entry].

'''Chong''' 
???

'''"The what?"''' 
(Precipitous drop in authorial expectations?)

'''Sidney... Kensington Sid''' 
???

'''transtriadic''' 
Beyond the three.

==Page 603==

'''"Spiritual... At Göttingen?"''' 
???

'''Applied Mechanics Institute''' 
An institute of the University of Göttingen

'''Prandtl's recent discovery of the boundary layer''' 
Ludwig Prandtl ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Prandtl Wikipedia]) in 1904 developed the theory of the boundary layer ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary%20layer Wikipedia]) in aerodynamics, greatly simplifying aerodynamic calculations.

'''powered flight . . . at the edge of history''' 
In 1905 already a reality, but the pioneering empirical work was taking place in Ohio, not Germany.

'''brambled guttie''' 
A proto golf-ball, see [http://www.che.rochester.edu/users/dafoster/ChE243/SciAm%20GolfBall.pdf here].

'''Bürgerstrasse''' 
German, "Citizen's Street", a street in Göttingen.

'''Brauweg''' 
German, "Brewery Way", a street in Göttingen.

'''Zhukovsky's Transformation''' 
The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joukowsky_transform Joukowsky Transform] maps the unit circle in the complex plane to a shape very much like an airfoil.

'''glass of tea''' 
(Why not 'cup'?)
because in Europe, as opposed to in England, tea may be drunk from glassware.

'''draw pictures . . . flights of arrows . . . vectors without pictures''' 
Vectors can be visualized as arrows in a plane or three-dimensional space; more generally they can be represented as arrays of coefficients, and now they are not limited to three dimensions.

'''''"...according to Spiral Theory, up to infinity." "And beyond, " added Gunther, nodding earnestly.''''' 
Reference to Buzz Lightyear's stock character phrase in 1995's TOY STORY (Pixar/Disney):
"To Infinity... and Beyond!"
--[[User:Btchakir|Btchakir]] 07:43, 19 December 2006 (PST)

==Page 604==

'''nontrivial zeroes''' 
The Riemann zeta function has two classes of zeros, the trivial zeroes being at negative even integers (-2, -4...), the non-trivial complex numbers, believed (but not proven) to have Re(z)=1/2. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis Wikipedia].

'''much-noted talk''' 
At the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris, Hilbert proposed a research programme of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_problems#Tabulated_information 23 problems]. The Riemann hypothesis is number 8 on the list.

'''eigenvalues''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvalue Wikipedia] Dudley Eigenvalue, D.D.S., was a character in ''V.''

'''Hermitian operator''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermitian_operator Wikipedia]

'''spine of reality... ''"Rückgrat von Wirklichkeit"''''' 
Probably a reference to the main diagonal of a Hermitian matrix, which can contain only real numbers. The German phrase is one accurate way to translate the English.

'''Hilbert-Polya Conjecture''' 
The conjecture that the zeroes of the Riemann function would be the eigenvalues of a Hermitian operator, just what Yashmeen is suggesting.

==Page 605==

'''Vance Aychrome''' 
The voracious detective is a stock figure in the mystery genre (Nero Wolfe, Mycroft Holmes, Inspector Dover, D.C.I. Dalziel and others).

'''Full English Breakfast''' 
Bacon, eggs, tomato, toast... otherwise known as a fry-up.

'''Pythagorean dietary''' 
(Possible missing word?)

'''kippers and bloaters''' 
Different words (both Scottish) for smoked herrings

'''baps''' 
soft bread rolls - another Scottish word

'''Spong machine''' 
Appropriate technology. An English-made hand-cranked coffee grinder that doesn't light up, lacks a readout to tell when the beans are ready, and signally fails to function before the user wakes up. Only drawback is that some spouses compare its sound to half a load of cobbles being dumped on the roof.

'''thinned''' 
From full 78. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot Wikipedia]

'''vegetarian haggis''' 
It exists: [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22vegetarian+haggis Google search]

==Page 606==

'''Lamont Replevin''' 
"Replevin" is a legal term for a form of civil action to recover possession of property being wrongfully held by another.

'''Elflock Villa''' 
???

'''Stuffed Edge, Herts''' 
An imaginary village in the South-East English county of Hertfordshire

'''kedgeree''' 
A hot breakfast dish of fish, rice, and eggs.

'''Cesare Lombroso''' 
Anthropologist who devised a method of identifying criminal "types" from their facial structures.

'''Trans-Oxanian''' 
From the other side of the Oxus River (now Amu-Darya) in Central Asia.

'''Graeco-Buddhist''' 
The hybrid cultural background evidenced in Shambhala.

'''bad hats''' 
A bad hat is a slang term for a rascal

==Page 607==

'''Gas Office''' 
As explained in the text, the Scotland Yard bureau that kept gas communications under surveillance.

'''communication by means of coal-gas''' 
Cf Nabokov's "Ada". Also inverse of Tesla's energy-transmitter. A parallel to the Tristero, too.

'''bombs... Suffragettes''' 
(Did they bomb post offices?!?)

'''Persian''' 
Majority language in Iran, now called Farsi.

'''Pashto''' 
A language spoken in Afghanistan and nearby.

'''Tadjik''' 
A language spoken in Tadjikistan. "Mountain Tadjik" presumably dominates in the 60% or so of the country that is in high mountains.

'''Seven Dials''' 
In Covent Garden, London - a place where 7 roads meet. An unsavory assignment for a policeman.

==Page 608==

'''"Avoid beans"''' 
Pythagoreans follow a proscription against eating beans.

'''spotted dick''' 
A suet pudding with raisins or currants

'''Yarmouth bloater''' 
A cured herring from the port town of Yarmouth.

'''queering the pitch''' 
The pitch in a medicine show is the audience; queering them means putting them onto the doc's game. In cricket, the pitch is the playing field; queering the pitch means disturbing the surface so that the ball bounces unpredictably.

''''shape'''' 
???

'''blue lamps''' 
Traditionally hung outside police stations in England.

'''lamé surfaces''' 
???

'''yarmulke... high crown... dented Trilby style''' 
[http://www.wpclipart.com/clothes/hats/index.html Image of a Trilby hat.]

==Page 609==

'''''Kelly's Suburban Dictionary''''' 
The peerless ''London A to Z'' did not come along until the 1930s.

'''wenlets''' 
Politician and journalist William Cobbett (1763-1835) called London "the great wen." It was not a compliment, because ''wen'' means a sebaceous cyst. Wenlets are small versions of the "great" wen.

==Page 610==

'''daylight oil''' 
???

'''refused to dim''' 
(Nicely vivid.)

'''Vontz's Universal Pick''' 
???

'''alchemized coke''' 
???

'''Lincrusta-Walton''' 
???

'''hipshot''' 
???

'''scalene polygons''' 
Polygons with sides of unequal length.

'''jet''' 
???

'''Apotheosis Sparkless Torch''' 
???

==Page 611==

'''magnalium''' 
An alloy of magnesium and aluminum.

'''Lamont Replevin (for it was he)''' 
Formula from penny-dreadful literature.

'''''The Slow and the Stupefied''''' 
Daytime soap 'The Young and the Restless'.

'''gas-head''' 
Cf pothead, acidhead, etc.

'''Pike's Peak''' 
Lew's old stompinground.

'''Gus Swallowfield''' 
???

'''most theft policies''' 
(Fact?)

'''pantechnicon''' 
A closed van or carryall. (Is TRP trying to put a burr under S. Weisenburger's saddle by bringing this vehicle back? SW's gloss in the ''GR Companion,'' at page 19 of the Viking edition, is famously wrong.)

'''legitimate bill of sale''' 
???

==Page 612==

'''''Pavonazzetto''''' 
???

'''Phrygian marble''' 
Phrygia is an ancient region of west central Asia Minor, to the south of Bithynia. Marble from there was highly valued.

'''Atys... Agdistis''' 
???

'''''The Mutilation of Atys''''' 
No images: [http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Mutilation%20of%20Atys&btnG=Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi Google image search]

'''Arturo Naunt, Chelsea's own, shocking the bourgeoisie since 1889''' 
Phrasing reminiscent of advertising.

'''shocking the bourgeoisie''' 
A popular pastime for young and not-so-young soi-disant radicals ("Epater le bourgeois").

'''koumiss vessel''' 
???

'''depending on the angle you hold it at, sometimes it doesn't look like anything at all''' 
A concise description of anamorphic and paramorphic images; this one needs the Paramorphoscope to interpret it.

'''wrathful deities from Tantric Buddhism''' 
???

==Page 613==

'''tiny German hand camera''' 
???

'''raw light''' 
???

'''Gasophilia''' 
???

'''Schwärmer''' 
The name is a German word meaning visionary, zealot, raver.

'''Waves in a timeless stream of Gas''' 
Replevin equates piped gas to the æther.

'''Sensitive Flame''' 
A burner flame adjusted so that it responds to the tiniest disturbance in the air. Used by both physicists and spiritualists.

'''Chidambaram''' 
???

'''''Akaša''''' 
???

'''Atman''' 
???

''''''Chaos'''''' 
???

'''van Helmont''' 
He claimed to have coined the word "gas" in just the way described here.

'''stridently unpopulated''' 
Cf p610.

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

ATD 460-488

2007-01-12T16:59:25Z

Gkleck: /* Page 467 */

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

==Page 460==

'''so close... rocking''' 
(Fact?)

==Page 461==

'''bust''' 
Eg 'gone bust'?

'''day... set to the side''' 
Title motif.

'''phantom rooms''' 
cf the Vibe mansion, p.160

'''came by''' 
(Page ref.)

==Page 462==

''''cute''' 
The word 'cute' is a shortened form of 'acute'.

'''Fickle Creek''' 
???

'''ice-points''' 
???

'''red whiskey''' 
???

'''Noctambulo''' 
Sleepwalker (Spanish).

'''insomnia''' 
Parody of think tanks, etc?

==Page 463==

'''"echoed off the steep mountainside"''' 
[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&q=%22echoed%20off%20the%20steep%20mountainside%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wp One hit].

'''for no more''' 
Solecism?

'''Silent Gray Fellows''' 
???

'''Indian V-twins''' 
Motorcycles first produced in 1907 by the Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Company [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Motorcycles Wikipedia entry].

'''Joe Hill's "Pie in the Sky"''' 
A/k/a "The Preacher and the Slave." Song written by IWW leader Joe Hill [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill Wikipedia entry] in 1911 that was an attack on organized religion as a means for keeping the workers down: "You get pie in the sky when you die." A parody of "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave Lyrics here]. Later recorded by Woody Guthrie.

'''ancient flat-out labor nihilists''' 
Notice fierce value judgment.

'''love lines, life lines, girdles of Venus''' 
Lines in the palm figuring in palmistry. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmistry#The_Lines Wikipedia entry].

'''overmapped''' 
???

'''barbwire''' 
AtD usually says 'bobwire'.

'''Four Corners Gang''' 
Name given to Sloat and Deuce after what happened with Sloat's wife, Lake, at the Four Corners. Evidently, the gang has many more members now.

'''Taos Lightning''' 
???

'''Zoltan''' 
???

'''Werner''' 
Allusion, homage, to Werner von Braun, rocket scientist?

==Page 464==

'''Excelsior''' 
???

'''divide a fellow into two''' 
Iceland spar motif.

'''Vang Feeley''' 
???

'''silencer bypass''' 
???

'''multiple outcomes''' 
Worldline motif.

'''clock-seconds''' 
(Interesting disambiguation.)

'''routine as elaborate''' 
I'm thinking maybe Ann Margaret in a 50s biker flick?

==Page 465==

'''Ed Chase's town''' 
See page 176.

'''Tortoni's''' 
See page 176.

'''Bill Jones's''' 
???

'''honorary Negro''' 
???

'''ankle-biter''' 
???

'''breakbeam stiff''' 
???

'''couple wives''' 
(Divorce, or bigamy?)

'''Coahuila''' 
Northern Mexican state where Frank unexpectedly found--and shot--Sloat Fresno in a Cantina.

'''Well.''' 
Not an answer, apparently.

==Page 466==

'''Hammers o' Hell''' 
???

'''Jephthah''' 
Alt. Jephtha. (Heb. יפתח). Israelite judge who semi-purposefully sacrificed his daughter to God following his victories of war against the Ammons. Judges 11-12.

'''narrow-gauge''' 
???

'''traitor to his class''' 
???

'''mucker work''' 
???

'''South Slavic knitted caps''' 
???

'''Austrian boys''' 
???

'''vengeful ghosts''' 
???

==Page 467==

'''fifteen years old... Julius''' 
Groucho Marx. Indeed born 1890, but didn't tour West until aged 20+. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx Wikipedia]

Groucho did tour the West, at age 15 in the summer of 1905, as part of the "Leroy Trio." And he was indeed abandoned by his partners in Cripple Creek, who stole his money. To get money to go home he took a job driving a grocery wagon through the mountains between Cripple Creek and Victor, though he knew nothing about horses. [Hector Arce, _Groucho_, NY: Perigree Books, 1979, pp. 56-57]

'''Mr. Archer''' 
???

'''Victor''' 
Colorado mining town near Cripple Creek.

'''East Ninety-third''' 

The Marx family lived at 179 E. 93rd St. from 1895 to 1910 (across the street from Harry Houdini! ).

==Page 468==

'''Cone Amor''' 
'Con amor' = 'with love' (Spanish). Ice cream cones were invented in 1904, so this is not quite anachronistic.

'''me? lady''' 
Capitalisation typo, or stylistic?

'''Fruita''' 
Town on Colorado's Western Slope.

'''Lois... Poutine''' 
???

==Page 469==

'''teeth were gone''' 
It's only been a couple of years. She's about 50.

==Page 470==

'''bengalines''' 
???

'''Barbary Coast''' 
???

'''lettuce opium''' 
Lactucarium, the milky fluid secreted by several species of lettuce, usually from the base of the stems. Lactucarium is known as lettuce opium because of its sedative and analgesic properties, and because it can be reduced to a thick smokeable solid. Long known in the U.S., regained popularity in the 1960's when people were looking for any cheap way to get high.

==Page 471==

'''Hippodrome''' 
???

==Page 472==

'''reoccupation''' 
Replacing Indians?

'''criminal palps''' 
???

==Page 473==

'''Crystal... Oneida''' 
Oneida crystal is a type of glassware. [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=oneida+crystal Google search]

'''sash-weights . . . casementing''' 
Extended and complicated figure likening, in part, a sky full of an approaching storm to a window in an old house. Specifically the sound of thunder is compared to sash-weights, the counter-balances built into all wooden windows (which enable an opened window, for example, to remain open instead of slamming shut), the sky itself the casement, or "neatly carpentered" frame, concealing those sash-weights.

==Page 474==

'''inside the angle''' 
Echoes p258.

==Page 475==

'''double-ought''' 
Deuce had been in Cripple Creek by 1895 (p195). He might have returned, or not been present.

==Page 476==

'''put his head into''' 
[http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=NPEVMXGFPTVD8NHJDW4N28U7R8QD077A&sitetype=1&sid=123465&did=4 pic]

'''Wall o' Death''' 
To ride the Wall of Death, rev up your motorcycle and guide it onto the inside of the cylindrical wall. Centrifugal force keeps you up. The act works best with multiple bikes. Either the wall is open gridwork or the "tip" (audience) sits above looking down into the cylinder.

'''ellipses''' 
Roman arenas, like most American football stadiums today, were generally built so that the perimeter created an ellipse.

==Page 477==

'''"For It Is Thou, Lord"''' 
???

'''Eugene Boilster.''' 
???

'''Happy Jack La Foam''' 
???

'''police ticker''' 
???

'''Flor de Coahuila''' 
???

'''twenty-five''' 
Would make him 15 in 1895 (p195).

==Page 478==

'''''senorita chinga chinga''''' 
Senorita fuck fuck

'''''mas cerveza''''' 
No 'por favor'!

'''co-conscious''' 
(What's Pynchon up to with this word?)

'''more shit''' 
Because shot through gut.

'''surprisingly careful latchclick''' 
Nice!

==Page 479==

'''Tace Boilster''' 
???

==Page 480==

'''Elsie Dinsmore''' 
???

'''Roy Mickie''' 
???

'''Salida''' 
???

'''blue columbines''' 
???

'''''atole con el dedo''''' 
???

==Page 481==

'''caps''' 
Pun.

'''wall of death''' 
(Mayva's not dead!?)

'''a week or ten days''' 
(Contradicts recent text?)

==Page 482==

'''getting deep''' 
Wifely surrender is a con?

==Page 483==

'''heeled''' 
Armed.

'''Champagne''' 
Pynchon consistently capitalises this. And he is grammatically correct so to do.

==Page 484==

'''before the days''' 
Title motif?

'''eyeball hydraulics''' 
Tears, not rolling eyes.

'''Swede''' 
See p266.

'''separate tracks''' 
Worldline motif.

==Page 485==

'''delivered into his own life''' 
(Born doomed, or early bad karma?)

'''Furies''' 
The Erinyes, or euphemistically the Eumenides: three Greek goddesses of vengeance: Tisiphone, Electa, Megaera.

'''"free"''' 
???

'''no little ones''' 
Fertility karma.

'''Sioux... melancholy''' 
Un-cliched?

'''her belly''' 
(Naked?)

==Page 486==

'''Phoebe Sloper''' 
???

'''seldom''' 
(With no kids, why not more free time?)

'''all he talked about''' 
To Deuce, Webb mentions Lake only once (p. 196). No trace of Lake being "all he talked about" in the text. On page 197, he cries out the names of his sons.

==Page 487==

''''Child of the Storm'''' 
Cf p190. Deuce is not present during that passage.

'''stove shovel''' 
For emptying wood ashes.

'''Greener shotgun''' 
???

'''she lit up''' 
(Anxiety, or freedom?)

==Page 488==

'''cahoots''' 
Marriage as cahoots?

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