Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

ATD 429-459

2007-01-20T13:33:08Z

Ian.stopher@dai.co.uk: /* Page 444 */ Added Inspector Sands

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

==Page 431==

'''metaphorical way''' and '''lateral resurrection''' 
Cf. p. 418, where ''metaphor'' and ''lateral'' are also used in quick succession.

'''"Turkish Corner"''' 
???

'''Bactrian''' 
''Camel''. Even-toed ungulate, two-humped (twin-peaked) as compared with the one-humped dromedary.

'''Cameling''' 
Seems to mean riding on a camel, contextually.

'''light might be a ''secret determinant of history''''' 
One of the averarching themes of the book, it seems. Natural light
vs. artificial and what it means for we humans.

==Page 432==

'''fatal word''' 
"Wife".

'''C.A.C.A.''' 
Caca; Spanish for "shit". The Chums have already begun to suspect the "shit", i.e. the malevolent organization that lies behind their boys' book heroics; the reader is now made aware of a large organization (see B.I.N., below) standing behind the massive airships and their crews. We all know what about the dynamics of large organizations, and the percentage of the time they spend in serving their purported purposes. Reminiscent of Van Vogt's Law: "90% of everything is shit (caca)".

'''Gamomania''' 
"Gamos" is greek for "marriage," and mania means "mania" or "madness."

'''H.M.S.F.''' 
His Majesty's Subdesertine Frigate (p425).

'''Balaam's ass''' 
refers to Num. 22:21-34 - Balaam rides out with the princes of Moab, but the Lord sends an angel to prevent him. Balaam does not see the angel but his ass does and will not go further. Balaam smites the ass three times, to no avail, until "the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said to Balaam: What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?" Balaam's ass and the serpent (in the Garden of Eden) are the only speaking animals in the bible.

'''reported... Polo''' 
???

==Page 433==

'''mutatis mutandis''' 
''Medieval Latin.'' A direct translation from Latin of mutatis mutandis would read, 'with those things having been changed which need to be changed'. More colloquially, it can be interpreted as 'the necessary changes having been made,' where "the necessary changes" are usually implied by a prior statement assumed to be understood by the reader. It carries the connotation that the reader should pay attention to the corresponding differences between the current statement and a previous one, although they are analogous. This term is used frequently in economics and in law, to parameterize a statement with a new term, or note the application of an implied, mutually understood set of changes. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutatis_mutandis].

This suggests we should view communication from the camel with the same skepticism with which we view the voices, or possibly view this communication as we would that from Balaam's ass.

'''''polygamy''''' 
Cf. Lake's conversion to (de facto) polyandry in Colorado Springs, p. 268. In both cases aquifers are the scene of the activity.

'''pan-spectral fields''' 
Well, ''pan'' means universal. As in ''panorama'', ''Pan-Am''.

Another suggestion of possible worlds.

'''"Euphrates" poplars''' 
???

'''aryq''' 
Most likely variant of Arrack (OED): name applied in Eastern countries to any liquour of native manufacture, usually distilled coconut palm sap.

'''B.I.N.''' 
Biometric Institute of Neuropathy, see p. 432.

As in "Loony bin".

'''seventeen-syllable''' 
Haiku - japanese poems consisting of 17 syllables, classically arranged in three lines of 5 - 7 - 5 syllables each

==Page 434==

'''Eta/Nu Transformators''' 
???

'''pari passu''' 
on an equal footing

'''Deep Blavatsky''' 
Named for Madame Helena Blavatsky (Helena Petrovna Hahn), founder of the Theosophical Society [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blavatsky].

==Page 435==

'''Gurkhas''' 
Nepalese forces that have fought alongside British troops.

'''German professors''' 
Likely a double allusion, first to Professor Werfner of Göttingen, referenced on p. 226, and also to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann Heinrich Schliemann], the German treasure hunter (not actually a professor) who first established the true historical location of Troy, the site of the Trojan War. His accomplishments are sadly underscored by his extremely amateurish excavation technique which destroyed as much as it extracted from the site.

'''General Forrest''' 
Nathan Bedford Forrest, rebel leader in U.S. Civil War. Although he pioneered high-mobility tactics, he may never have uttered the famous quotation; see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest Wikipedia entry.]

'''archiepiscopal''' 
Pertaining to an archbishop.

'''Fabergé''' 
Russian jewelers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Faberg%C3%A9 Wikipedia entry].

'''"appealing though they be or, shall I say, as they are"''' 
Captain Toadflax's corrects his grammatical mistake, an error that is partially obscured by the inverted construction he employs. If one straightens out his words into a more conventional form, e.g., "though they [secular pleasures] be appealing," the error is clearer: ''they'', the third person plural pronoun, requires ''are'' as a verb, i.e. ''pleasures are'' rather than ''pleasures be''. The ''OED'' lists many examples of ''be'' taking the place of ''are'' in similar contexts, but notes that this usage is either dialectal or archaic.
:Why Toadflax commits this error is less clear than what the error itself is. One possibility is that Pynchon is making an allusion to Captains Bildad and Peleg of ''Moby-Dick'', who speak in an archaic vernacular typical of New England Puritans.
::For more information, see the ''OED'', "be, v.," sub-entry, A.I.h.¶.

'''subarenaceous''' 
Below or beneath the sand (sub) + (arenaceous).

==Page 436==

'''limen''' 
threshold

'''transmundane''' 
literally: beyond the mundane, beyond the world

'''lamaseries''' 
Domiciles of Buddhist lamas (as in "monasteries").

'''Torriform Inclusion''' 
A made-up condition from Torus==Arch.: a large convex molding, semicircular in cross section, located at the base of a classical column?
From the American Heritage Dictionary.
St. Cosmo has just seen, he thinks, a "watchtower".
'Watchtower'-Cf. the name of the magazine (and building in Brooklyn) that the Jehovah's Witnesses use.
'distinguishing man-made from God-made'...

'''Urban terrain''' 
(But only cities unwisely built on sand.)

'''Stilton Gaspereaux''' 
??? stilton is type of blue cheese from England.

'''Sven Hedin''' 
Swedish explorer, especially of the Asian countries, and excavator of ruins of ancient cities. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Hedin wikipedia]

'''Aurel Stein''' 
Sir Marc Aurel Stein. Hungarian-born explorer later knighted as a British citizen. Credited with the discovery, and arguably the exploitation, of the Mogao Grottoes in China. A rock-carved repository of ancient Buddhist texts and murals, the grottoes are known collectively as 'The Cave of a Thousand Buddhas' and protected a copy of the Mahayana Diamond sutra, acknowledged as the oldest book in existence. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Aurel_Stein Wikipedia entry].

'''first known maps'''crusades and pilgrimages''' 
None of Ptolemy's maps has survived the classical period. They were, however, reconstructed in manuscript and engraved on copper or carved in wood for editions of the Ptolemy atlas. In 1482, the first woodcut edition, containing the first map of the world to include contemporary discoveries, was published in Ulm, Germany. It contains a brightly handcolored map of the Holy Land....

Allusion to the Map/Territory relation—the relationship between symbol and object. Coined by Alfred Korzybski, “The map is not the territory” is a related expression meaning that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g., the pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone; one's opinion of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is not that person; a metaphorical representation of a concept is not the concept itself; and so on. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_map_is_not_the_territory]Here, the (abstract) map itself could be a guide to a spritual quest or to conquest.

==Page 437==

'''Nernst lamps''' 
Nernst = German physicist and chemist who formulated the third law of thermodynamics (1864-1941)
Synonym: Walther Hermann Nernst

'''range-finder''' 
Cf. 'range', passim

'''level of encryption''' 
(Cf Heisenberg?)Does not seem to allude to Heisenberg and his Uncertainty Principle so much as buried layers of meaning that can hide to invisibility.

'''Mount Kailash''' 
A mountain located in the Chinese Himalayas with great religious significance in Hinduism and Buddhism. In Hinduism, it is seen as the residence of Shiva, God of destruction and regeneration. The mountain is visited every year by many religious pilgrims. In Buddhism, the mountain was believed to be the location of a battle between two ancient sorcerers: Milarepa (Tantric Buddhism) and Naro-Bonchung (Tibetan Bön religion). Pynchon is perhaps alluding to the population dividing nature of religions. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kailash wikipedia]

'''polarize light... in time''' 
Thematic.

'''Manichaeans''' 
A gnostic sect that followed the third century Persian prophet Mani. Their
main theological belief was in a stark divide between Good and Evil.

Very relevant here in ADT: one could call their theology, BINARY.

==Page 438==

'''expanded sense... Maxwell... Hertz''' 
All forms of electromagnetic radiation form a spectrum, of which visible light is a small part; all such radiation shares fundamental physical properties.
Cf. range as spectrum.

''''Perfects'''' 
Perfects are the priests of the Cathar, a pantheistic manicheistic sect from the middle ages.

'''Graeco-Buddhist''' 
???

'''Italo-Islamic''' 
???

==Page 439==

'''Nuovo Rialto''' 
Seems like Pynchon creating a "New Rialto" city under these sands as many
cities take the name of an older city and add New....

From Wikipedia: Rialto is an area of the San Polo sestiere of Venice, known for its markets and for the Rialto Bridge.

The area was settled by the ninth century, when a small area in the middle of the Realtine Islands either side of the Rio Businiacus was known as the Rivoaltus. Soon, the Businiacus became known as the Grand Canal, and the district became the Rialto, referring to only the area on the left bank.

The Rialto became an important district in 1097, when Venice's market moved there, and in the following century a boat bridge was set up across the Grand Canal providing access to it. This was soon replaced by the Rialto Bridge.

Pynchon seems to love Venice so Nuovo Rialto is very ironically intended given this scene.

'''crystallography of the silica medium''' 
computer-base [silicon] allusion!?

'''clearly a thousand years more recent than they ought to have been'''
That is, the Manichean shrines date from the fourteenth Century, not the fourth Century when Mani, the founder, started Manicheanism. Pynchon dating 'when it went bad' in history?

'''Passing of the Remarks''' 
Sounds like a humorous reification of what gets said between sailors. Modeled after Changing of the Guard?

'''Steeplechase Park''' 
???

==Page 440==

'''screaming...with blood''' 
Screaming motif.

'''''chong pir''''' 
???

'''Uyghur''' 
Member of an ethnic group in western China. It is sometimes claimed that the Uyghurs are Indo-European in one sense or another.

'''skeleton rig''' 
Concealed weapon? Seems to be a Browning, a gun..see four lines later.

'''andante''' 
Literally "walking." An Italian word typically seen in notation for classical music. It denotes a moderately slow pace.

'''Sandman Saloon''' 
tavern for the 'sandmen', without those great tavern names in the above-ground world. Negative associations to this saloon, it seems, unlike the usual saloons in TRP's world.

==Page 441==

'''Leonard and Lyle''' 
resonates as Leopold and Loeb?-- two young American murderers in a famous case from early in the Century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold-Loeb Wikipedia]. Probably a stretch: Google comes up with mentioning Sir Leonard Lyle [http://www.parkexplorer.org.uk/park_intro.asp?ID=new16 1], sugar-magnate and heir to Abram Lyle [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Lyle 2] and "Lyle‘s Golden Syrup" [http://www.lylesgoldensyrup.com/LylesGoldenSyrup/PastPresent/default.htm 3]. Thats one interesting logo, what with the dead lion/bees and the tibetan stamp on ATD, btw. Golden Syrup = oil?

'''''teke''''' 
From this [http://home.earthlink.net/~lkritikos/glossary.html glossary on greek rembetiko music]: "teke (pl. tekedhes): A club where one could buy hashish and the use of a narghile in which to smoke it"

An American fraternity or a member thereof. Tau Kappa Epsilon. Founded in the 1890s; has had a reputation for being a bit wilder than many fraternities.

'''Spindletop''' 
From wikipedia: Spindletop is a salt dome oil field located in south Beaumont, Texas (approx. 30.02 -94.07) in the United States. On January 10, 1901, the well "Lucas 1" came in at Spindletop, marking the birthdate of the modern petroleum industry. At 100,000 barrels of oil a day, the gusher tripled U.S. oil production overnight, ensuring the second industrial revolution would be fueled not by wood and coal but by oil and its byproducts. Some of the companies chartered to exploit the wealth of Spindletop are some of today's largest and well known corporations such as ExxonMobil, and Texaco.

'''Groznyi''' 
Grozny or Groznyy (Russian: Гро́зный; Chechen: Соьлж-ГIала, Syolzh-Ghaala) is the capital of the Chechen Republic in Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River....As most of the residents there were Terek Cossacks, the town grew slowly until the development of Oil reserves in the early 20th century. This spiralled development of industry and petrochemical production. In addition to the oil drilled in the city itself, the city became a geographical centre of Russia's network of oil fields, and also in 1893 became part of the Transcaucasia - Russia Proper railway. From wikipedia

'''calyx bits''' 
SYLLABICATION: ca·lyx
PRONUNCIATION: klks, klks
NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. ca·lyx·es or ca·ly·ces ( kl-sz, kl-)
1. The sepals of a flower considered as a group. 2. A cuplike structure or organ, such as one of the cuplike divisions of the pelvis or of the kidney. 3. A collecting structure in the kidney.
ETYMOLOGY: Latin calyx, calyc-, from Greek kalux
From The American Heritage Dictionary

'''adults''' 
Chums not adults, then? No,they do not age, it seems.

'''''assalamu alaykum''''' 
A muslim greeting.

'''anticline''' 
SUFFIX: Slope: anticline.
ETYMOLOGY: Back-formation from –clinal. From American Heritage Dictionary.

==Page 442==

'''''equine altitude''''' 
High horse.

'''allure of Veneto-Uyghur women''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_Veneti Veneti] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanais Veneto] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs Uyghurs] Long distance trade (like wars and tourism in general) is very likely to enforce the intermingling of different [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_pool Gene Pools], which, more often than not, results in particularily beautiful specimens of the kinds involved. Travels of mediterrenean merchants along the various branches of the Silk Road seem to have been pretty common from at least 14th century on - see [http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/pegol.html Pegelotti‘s Merchant Handbook] (ca. 1340) which partially reads like a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonely_planet Lonely Planet Guide] of back then. During the Renaissance most of the merchants (from Florence/Venice/Geneva) set out from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanais Tana/Tanais] which some sources put as a trade-post if not colony of the "West".

'''2 percent... most of them''' 
Implies at least 150 in crew.

'''Marco Querini''' 
???

'''Terrenascondite''' 
???

'''Pozzo San Vito''' 
???

==Page 443==

'''peterman option''' 
A 'peterman' is a slang term for a safe-blower.

'''Consomme Imperial''' 
???

'''Timbales de Supremes de Volailles''' 
???

'''Gigot Grille a la Sauce Piquante''' 
A 'gigot' is a leg of lamb or haunch of veal. 'Sauce Piquante' is a spicy sauce.

'''aubergines a la Sauce Mousseline''' 
Eggplants with mussel sauce.

'''Pouilly-Fuisse''' 
A white Burgundy made from the Chardonnay grape.

'''Graves''' 
A white wine from the Graves district of France.

==Page 444==

'''Oasi''' 
Plural of "oasis."

'''cataplexy''' 
Sudden loss of muscle power following a strong emotional stimulus.

'''Nobel brothers''' 
Robert and Ludvig Nobel, brothers of Alfred Nobel of dynamite and prize fame, co-founders of Branobel, an important early oil company that controlled a large amount of Russian output. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branobel Wikipedia entry].

'''shaft-alley''' 
???

'''the balloon is up''' 
British metaphor: The action has started. A phrase also used in ''V.''

'''F.O.''' 
Foreign Office

'''''Daily Mail''''' 
London tabloid, staunch early supporters of Adolf Hitler. Today specialises in stirring up hatred of immigrants and other minorities.

'''Inspector Sands''' 
A code word used in London to alert authorities without causing panic amongst the general public. Generally the alert is raised by the fire alarm. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Sands Wikipedia entry].

'''"Sands of Inner Asia"''' 
Captain, now Inspector Sands, seems to be being compared for his achievements to "Lawrence of Arabia" parodistically.

'''Taklamakan''' 
???

==Page 445==

'''Kashgar to Urumchi''' 
Two cities currently on the far western border of China. Presumably in this context they were two points inside the general area within which the 'Great Powers' competed to try and find Shambhala.

'''fell into the hand of''' 
Ana analogy with the present-day situation in Central Asia in particular. throughout the book, there are references to Anarchist/Terrorists, to the spread of dynamite and other kinds of phenomena. These are all technologies that allow, or cause, power to flow into the hands of the powerless to use for their own purposes.

'''World-Island''' 
The Earth.

'''discreet summons''' 
Eg "paging Dr Blue".
It doesn't seem to me to be a phrase that needs a gloss: a discreet summons is simply what it says and made be made in any number of ways.

'''far wicket''' 
A 'wicket' may simply be a gate; but in the context of a novel and the bomber at Headingly cricket ground and Fenners, the Cambridge cricket ground, a 'wicket' is the three stumps at one end of a cricket pitch. ("The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly" - see p.236.)

'''wog''' 
''Chiefly British.'' An ethnic slur used for any dark-skinned peoples. Alleged to stand for "Western Oriental Gentleman", but mainly applied to Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs, and other brown-skinned Asians.
I have heard it comes from 'wily oriental gentleman'; but the Oxford English Dictionary states that the origin is uncertain and defines a 'wog' as someone especially of Arab extraction.

'''Vic removal''' 
???

'''eating an explosive''' 
Cf Lew's Cyclomite.

==Page 446==

'''St Martin le Grand''' 
A street in the City of London.

'''Angel Street''' 
Another street in the City which meets St Martin le Grand at right-angles.

'''G.P.O. West''' 
G.P.O - General Post Office

'''pneumatic dispatches''' 
An extensive 'pneumatic dispatch' system existed on London during the Victorian era, started in 1851 and carrying on at least into the 1930's. By 1886 London had 94 telegram tubes totaling 34 1/2 miles and around 4.5 million telegraph messages were carried in cylinders at around 20mph. At its height the network extended some 57 miles connecting 67 branch offices via a central sorting office. See [http://www.capsu.org/history/telegram_conveyors.html] and
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/pneumess/pneumess.htm] (with illustrations).

'''drill suits''' 
???

'''chars''' 
Charwomen. Maids, cleaners.

'''clicks and rests''' 
Presumably the clicks of a telegraphic system and the rests or silences in between.

'''Northern Temple of Connexion''' 
It's in the north of the City; and the phrase suggests the religious intensity of the need to connect or communicate as well as mildly satirising it.

'''marblework''' 
Such buildings would have used quantities of marble; hence the image of a 'temple' above.

'''Bloggins''' 
An archetypal ordinary man; an everyman figure.

'''allegro vivatchy''' 
phonetic of 'allegro vivace' - a musical term for a quick tempo

==Page 447==

'''grease-paint''' 
'Grease-paint' refers to old-fashioned stage make-up.

'''cylinder of gutta-percha''' 
Pneumatic dispatches were carried in cylinders of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha Gutta-Percha] -- an inelastic latex made from the sap of the Gutta-Percha tree -- covered in felt. See [http://www.capsu.org/history/telegram_conveyors.html]. Gutta-percha crops up a number of times in ATD, possibly enough to suggest some sort of motif or connection?

Gutta percha per se is a Victorian equivalent to rubber.

'''its "D" box''' 
The receiving mechanism on the end of pneumatic dispatch pipe.

"The somewhat complicated pattern of double sluice valve originally used at the central stations has been superseded by a simpler form, known as the D box, so named Despatching from the shape of its cross section. This box is of and cast iron, and is provided with a close-fitting, Receiving brass-framed, sliding lid with a glass panel. This Apparatus, lid fits air-tight, and closes the box after a carrier has been inserted into the mouth of the tube; the latter enters at one end of the box and is there bell-mouthed. A supply pipe, to which is connected a 3-way cock, is joined on to the box and allows communication at will with either the pressure or vacuum mains, so that the apparatus becomes available for either sending (by pressure) or receiving (by vacuum) a carrier. Automatic working, by which the air supply is automatically turned on on the introduction of the carrier into a tube and on closing of the D box, and is cut off when the carrier arrives, was introduced in 1909." From the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on Pneumatic Dispatch, cited at [http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/pneumess/pneumess.htm]

'''Holborn''' 
Holborn is between the Strand (at the northern end of Waterloo Bridge) and Bloomsbury.

'''Saffron Hill''' 
is in the City, an area named Farringdon, east of Holborn.

'''''tantum dic verbo'' isn't it''' 
Might be derived from that part of the Mass where it's said: "Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum: sed '''tantum dic verbo''' et sanabitur anima mea" ("Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but '''speak the word''' only, and my soul shall be healed")

Sands seems to be telling Gaspereaux to "just say the word".

'''''intact''''' 
(Did I miss this?)

==Page 448==

'''because I'm mad''' 
???

'''half-sovereign case''' 
A sovereign is old English money for one pound, i.e 20 shillings. A half-sovereign is ten shillings old money.

'''Mr. Campbell-Bannerman''' 
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836-1908) was a Liberal MP and then Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1905 to 1908. I'm not sure when he was knighted; but he's not the only character in the novel connected with Trinity College, Cambridge.

==Page 449==

'''Clarabella''' 
Clarabelle=name of the clown on The Howdy Doody Show [TV] in the fifties.

'''Audacity, Iowa''' 
???

==Page 450==

'''DREAMTIME MOVY''' 
Misspelling is dreamlike? Or, more possibly, the spelling hadn't yet been standardized.

'''log... waterfall''' 
Cf DW Griffith?

'''lens-brother''' 
(Like masonic sign?)(Also reminiscent of the lens (the K/kid/d) carries in Delaney's ''Dhalgren'')

'''Powers movement''' 
???

'''Geneva''' 
???

'''Wilt Flambo''' 
Flambeau = torch (French).

'''acetylene''' 
When the flammable gas was used for illumination, it was often generated on the spot by dripping water onto lumps of calcium carbide.

==Page 451==

'''nitro in the film''' 
Cellulose nitrate, also known as collodion, was the predecessor to modern photographic films. The collodion was the substratum to the chemistry that made the image.

'''the tip''' 
The audience. Pynchon uses the word many times in ''AtD.''

'''strange relation''' 
Cf GR on calculus.

'''dark perplexity''' 
Cf Gen X?

'''dilapidated portals''' 
See p.406: the West Gate's "two flanking towers of rusticated stone and Gothical aspect... an aspect of terrible antiquity..."

'''queen-of-the-prairie''' 
???

==Page 452==

'''Sempitern''' 
An archaic term meaning 'eternal', a poetic but appropriate name for a river? Echoing "Serpentine," the lake in London's Hyde Park.

'''siegecraft of Time''' 
Cf Paris Commune siege, p.19.

'''between Cleveland and Denver''' 
Merle's idiosyncratic choice of endpoints?

'''automorphic functions''' 
Auto= self; same as in autogamy. American Heritage Dict. -morph = Form, structure, function. Self-forming, self-structuring-- or self-organizing as Pynchon says elsewhere in ADT.

==Page 453==
'''We thus enter the whirlwind''' 
God is sometimes referred to this way. Often Capitalized, but here the speaker is using it literally, but Pynchon maybe metaphorically?

'''Lobatchevskian''' 
of Nikolai Lobachevsky, a Russian Mathematician, known for work into non-Euclidean geometry.

'''Automorphic Dispensation''' 
Self-forming, self-organizing dispensation.

'''distressing regularity''' 
Explains dilapidation?

'''Thorvald''' 
Scandinavian name from the Old Norse name ''Þórvaldr''. It combines the name "Thor" (thunder) and scandinavian word "valdr" (ruler), to create the meaning "thunder ruler" or "ruler of the tunder". Either would be apt, in this case.

The persisting storm also occurs in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in at least one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

'''''thresher dinners''''' 
Hearty communal midday meals for men taking part in harvest. Here a sacrifice to Thorvald.

==Page 454==

'''"gaff"''' 
A deceptive feature like the rabbit-concealing false bottom in a magician's top hat.

'''Giant Airships of 1896 and '7''' 
[http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Mysterious-airship.jpg Photo and info here]

'''Chick''' 
First Chum to appear in non-Chums chapter? Chick is the Chum we know, besides Pugnax if we count him, to have come aboard The Inconvenience from the real world. Another meaning to Counterfly? More earthbound?

==Page 455==

'''Cleveland... trial... Bounce v. Vibe''' 
See p67 & 426

'''Somble, Strool, and Fleshway''' 
???

''''paranoia querulans'... P.Q.''' 
A made-up noun to mean the psychological disease of constant questioning of one's paranoia?...

'''blasting agent''' 
???

'''detonans''' 
That which is detonated - cod latin

'''"I'm just another nutty inventor"''' 
Roswell has been discussing his plans to dynamite the Vibe Corp. which has used its power to harrass him. Throught his work, esp. ''Gravity's Rainbow'', Pynchon has dealt with themes involving the split between elect and preterite, or to use a more simplified phrase, winners and losers. Dynamite offers the small and powerless, the "long-shot opponents of the mills of Capital" referred to earlier in the page, an expression of power of their own. In this way it is like the AK-47 today which has made it far more difficult for powers (e.g. the United States in Iraq) to exert control over populations.

==Page 456==

'''aigrette''' 
Literally an egret or aigrette (or Lesser White Heron); hence a tuft of feathers such as an egret has and hence a spray of gems worn on the head and finally luminous rays seen emerging from the moon in solar eclipses or, to quote the OED, "at the ends of electrified bodies".

'''Pencil''' 
To mathematicians, a pencil is a family of geometric objects sharing a common property, such as a collection of lines that pass through a common point. (Of course, constipated mathematicians also find pencils useful for working out logs).

'''equivalent of a shrug''' 
Nice anthropomorphism.

'''lost mines''' 
(Factual?)

==Page 457==

'''tourbillon''' 
???

'''make time impervious to gravity''' 
Thematic to this book and GR?

'''patent pencils''' 
patent here to describe pencils seems to mean 1) of high quality, Archaic 2) open to general inspection... American Heritage Dictionary - because the pencils we all know and use were never "patented"... "He [Ebenezer Wood] constructed the first hexagon- and octagon-shaped pencil cases that we have today. Ebenezer did not patent his invention and shared his techniques with whoever asked." from Wikipedia.

'''zephyr gingham''' 
???

'''lawn''' 
???

'''pongee''' 
???

==Page 458==

'''professors... engineers''' 
Theory vs practice.

'''Latinate token of prestige''' 
PhD, summa cum laude, etc.

'''suspicious of night horizons''' 
(sunsets?)Absence of light horizons?

'''current... purity''' 
Free of noise?

'''Minkowski''' 
Hermann Minkowski was a German mathematician who made useful contributions in the development of relativity, amongst other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowski]

'''Three times ten... minus one seconds''' 
Three times ten to the fifth refers to the speed of light. The square root of minus 1 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_unit Wikipedia] is also known as the Imaginary Unit or i. i is sometimes also expressed as the square root of -1, as here. Complex numbers [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_number Wikipedia] can be expressed as a + bi where a is the real part of the complex number and b is the imaginary part. Complex numbers were an important element of the work of both Minkowski and Einstein.

''Against the Day'' takes place at the time when Newtonian physics were being supplanted, at least in theory, by physics based on Relativity. This equation touches on that. But also, the use of a real and an imaginary number returns to the theme of duality that arises throughout the book. The spacetime measured by imaginary or complex numbers would seem to be something different though co-existent with 'our' spacetime.

'''other expression''' 
Contextually, Roswell seems to be refering to the other side of the above equation...'that other expression 'over there'...they are at a slate "blackboard."

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

ATD 219-242

2007-01-03T16:37:50Z

Ian.stopher@dai.co.uk: /* Page 235 */ Added page references and deleted user comment

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

==Page 219==

[[image:tetractys.png|thumb|175px|right|The Tetractys]]'''True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys''' 
The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikipedia entry]

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon.

'''Tyburnia''' 
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), ''Dickens's Dictionary of London'', 1879.

'''Sir John Soane''' 
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane Wikipedia entry]

'''Madame Blavatsky''' 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia]

==Page 220==

'''Caen stone''' 
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

'''syrinx''' 
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

'''ten-in-one''' 
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow Wikipedia]

'''Grand Cohen''' 
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

==Page 221==

'''"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."''' 
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around [[ATD_26-56#Page_39|page 39]]) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around [[ATD_149-170#Pages_154-155|page 154]])? Parallel worlds?

''''Tzaddik'''' 
A righteous Jew. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadik Wikipedia]

==Page 222==

'''Simla''' 
British outpost in Himalayas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla Wikipedia]

'''Smartly taken at silly point''' 
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=smartly.taken+silly.point examples]

'''To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent''' 
Mystical formula. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=to.know.to.dare.to.will examples]
The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

'''"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"''' 
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'': "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the ''Tractatus'' [http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html here].) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the [http://www.phil-reed.com/2006/02/14/the-love-songs-of-thomas-pynchon/ P's and Q's love song], and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really.

==Page 223==

'''"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"''' 
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

==Page 224==

'''"'walking out'"''' 
A walking date.

'''the veil of ''maya''''' 
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of ''The World as Will and Representation''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion) Wikipedia entry]

'''Trumper's''' 
London's royal barbers since 1875. [http://www.trumpers.com/ site]

'''On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted''' 
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/06/nwriter06.xml Image of Letter]

'''crosswords in newspapers''' 
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword#History 1913]. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, [http://www.crossword.org.uk/listen.htm the Listener crossword].

==Page 225==

'''Girton College''' 
For women, founded 1869. [http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/about/history/brief.html history]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Pig latin?

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
To forcefeed of the face. [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

==Page 226==

[[image:tarotdevil.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Devil by Colman-Smith]]'''growler''' 
Hansom cab.

<div id="renfrew"></div>'''Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen''' 
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

'''Berlin Conference of 1878''' 
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia]

==Page 227==

'''"The Great Game"''' 
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, ''Kim''. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia entry] Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

'''mamluk lamps''' 
[http://www.aucegypt.edu/academic/arabstudies/contact.html pic]

'''English Rose''' 
Traditional English beauty.

==Page 228==

'''Oliver Lodge''' 
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge Wikipedia entry].

'''William Crookes''' 
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Piper''' 
Probably [http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm Leonora Piper] 1857-1950.

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry].

'''W.T. Stead''' 
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the ''Titanic.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
???

'''Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia''' 
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obrenovich Wikipedia] the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]

==Page 229==

'''syntonic''' 
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

'''Russo-Turkish War''' 
(1877-1878) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 Wikipedia entry]

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

'''Michaelmas term''' 
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas_term Wikipedia]

'''tweeny''' 
Betweenmaid.

'''Edward Oxford''' 
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford Wikipedia]

'''Salic law''' 
was a body of traditional law that codified policy on matters such as inheritance, crime, and murder. The British and Hanoverian thrones separated after the death of King William IV of the United Kingdom and of Hanover. Hanover practiced the Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

'''Tory despotism''' 
Thatcher?
: Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Augustus_I_of_Hanover Wikipedia entry]

'''Catholics''' 
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

==Page 231==

[[Image:pennyblack.jpg|thumb|100px|right|The first adhesive stamp, 1840]]
'''stamp''' 
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]

'''immune to time''' 
Cf Wilde's ''Picture of Dorian Gray'', in which a painted portrait ages while its subject remains young.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201).

==Page 232==

'''Éliphaz Lévi''' 
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, ''nom de plume'' of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi Wikipedia entry].

'''punters''' 
customers, clients

'''number twenty-four''' 
Or 25? [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp11.htm etext]

'''Iamblichus''' 
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_%28philosopher%29 Wikipedia]

'''maquillage''' 
Cosmetic or theatrical makeup. [http://www.answers.com/maquillage&r=67 def]

==Page 233==

'''Collis Brown's Mixture''' 
Contained morphine, choloform, and caramel, among other things. [http://admin.safescript.com/drugcgic.cgi/DRUG?1006901319+0 Full ingredients]

'''xylene''' 
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xyline is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylene wikipedia]

'''a thousand pounds a year''' 
Over $100,000 today. [http://futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=1000&currency=pounds&fromYear=1900 cite]

==Page 234==

'''Condy's fluid''' 
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bollmann_Condy Wikipedia]

'''Cheapside''' 
an important market street in the City of London.

'''mews''' 
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

'''Coombs de Bottle''' 
"comes the bottle" ?

'''Russian duck''' 
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

==Page 235==

'''sensitive flames''' 
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
For bombs.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate.

==Page 236==

'''The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly''' 
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. [http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/hardknox.shtml info]

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' ''Life, The Universe, and Everything,'' where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

'''Phosgene''' 
A poison gas used in World War I.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene Wikipedia]

'''logwood''' 
Source of red dye. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logwood Wikipedia]

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Gemini''' 
21 May to 20 June. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia]

'''Bosanquet''' 
Another Ashes reference. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/9158.html Bernard Bosanquet] invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_swing reverse swing], another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

'''Pom''' 
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

'''Hebrew letter Shin''' 
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in ''Star Trek'', with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See [http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute]

Pynchon placed one of these in ''Mason & Dixon'', as well:

:Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter ''Shin'' and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485) 
Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics] 
 
Is Pynchon transposing the concept of thermodynamic entropy into the realm of economics? Exploitative communism: appropriated funds will be lost in order to even out the system of transfers?
:Seems like overanalysis. Seems to simply use the Second Law in its simplest sense: increasing disorder when stuff gets complicated.

'''''morsus fundamento''''' 
Latin: A bite on the ass?

'''three-percent consols''' 
British bonds. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''Colney Hatch''' 
London lunatic asylum. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colney_Hatch_Lunatic_Asylum Wikipedia]

'''MCTAGGART... VATICAN... HARDY''' 
Logician joke. [http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html etext] Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher
who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it.
W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the
famous philosophers in England.

'''CREATE MORE DUKES''' and '''EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS''' 
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html].

==Page 241==

'''A bosie from a beamer''' 
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

==Page 242==

'''Inner Asia''' 
[http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/gif/nstereo.gif map]

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

ATD 26-56

2006-11-30T17:51:01Z

Ian.stopher@dai.co.uk: /* Page 39 Kazoos don't appear directly in M&D or Vineland*/

==Page 26==

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

==Page 28==

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

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
A child who drinks and the unexpectedly sexual nature of her father and Chick's discussion of her recall Bianca from ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' another child given certain adult characteristics. The tone that accompanies this bizarre conversation strikes one as the first sour note of the book.

==Page 29==

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

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

==Page 36==

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

A detective named 'Lew' reminds 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.

'''fictitiousness''' 
On this page and the next, 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. But their answer is strange:
"No more than Wyatt Earp or Nellie Bly...Although the longer a fellow's name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from non-fiction."

==Page 39==

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

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

I have to ask: WHO are these people and what have they done to poor Lew? Is this all hallucination?

==Page 44==

'''Francis Ferdinand''' 
This is indeed the same Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in 1914 triggered World War I. At the time of his appearance in AtD, 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]

'''"He had learned to step to the side of the day."''' 
Through the book there are juxtapositions of things with and against the day. Here, we see Lew set "to the side" of the day.

==Page 45==

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

'''trabants''' 
"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.

==Page 46==

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

==Page 47==

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

==Page 48==

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

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 49==

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

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

'''Reverand 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.

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

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

==Page 50==

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

==Page 51==

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

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

==Page 53==

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

'''"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.

==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. unfocuses, depressed, without direction, it may lead to patterns in the plot.

I

2006-11-22T09:39:35Z

Ian.stopher@dai.co.uk: Minor comment on the refraction of the text of the book's cover

'''Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca 245 - ca 325)''' 
232; also known as Iamblichus Chalcidensis, was a Greek neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy; 620; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_(philosopher) Wikipedia entry]

'''Iceland spar''' 
126; Iceland spar is a calcite, which gets its name from "chalix" the Greek word for lime, a most amazing and yet, most common mineral. It is one of the most common minerals on the face of the Earth, comprising about 4% by weight of the Earth's crust and is formed in many different geological environments. Iceland spar is basically clear cleaved fragments of completely colorless (ice-like) calcite, originally discovered and named after Eskifjord, Iceland where the calcite is found in basalt cavities. It best demonstrates the unique property of calcite called double refraction where, when a ray of light enters the crystal and due to calcite's unique optical properties, the ray is split into fast and slow beams. As these two beams exit the crystal they are bent into two different angles (known as angles of refraction) because the angle is affected by the speed of the beams. A person viewing into the crystal will see two images ... of everything; "The Book of..." 133; "paramorphoscopes of" 250; ''Schieferspath'', 305-06; Zombini's, 355; aka ''espato'' or ''espanto'', 375; double-refraction, 375; 387; 391; 437; 564; "expression in crystal form of Earth's velocity" 688; [http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/carbonat/calcite/calcite.htm From this website]. Note the text of the dust jacket of the book is split into three, not two overlapping images.

'''icosahedron''' 
565; polyhedron having 20 faces, but usually a regular icosahedron is implied, which has equilateral triangles as faces. [Etymology: 16th Century: from Greek eikosaedron, from eikosi twenty + -edron -hedron]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosahedron Wikipedia entry]

'''Ictibus, The Phenominal Dr.''' 
344; "and His Safe-Deflector Hat"; ictibus is the ablative case for the Latin word "ictus" meaning a "blow" or "strike" - thus, away from a strike, appropriately

[[image:Tarot_Judgement.jpg|thumb|Judgement|right]]'''Icosadyad''' 
227; "they are the ones most capable of damage"; Greek: Icosa- = 20; Dyad, according to the Pythagoreans, is the principle of "twoness" or "otherness" and, generally, is any two entities regarded as a unit; in the Tarot context, "icosadyad" would refer a doubling of Number XX of the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, Judgement; 231; 496; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_(Tarot_card) Wikipedia entry]

'''Idiom Neutral''' 
533; an international auxiliary language, published in 1902 by the International Academy of the Universal Language under the leadership of Waldemar Rosenberger, a St. Petersburg engineer; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom_Neutral Wikipedia entry]

'''I.G.L.O.O.''' 
122; Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation, a "radiational clearinghouse in Northern Alaska"

'''''Imbottigliata''''' 
28; Italian = bottled;

'''Imperium of Steam''' 
567; 680;

'''''Imum Coeli''''' 
406; In astrology, the ''Imum Coeli'' (Latin for "bottom of the sky"), IC, is the point in space where the ecliptic crosses the meridian in the north, exactly opposite the Midheaven. It is said to refer to our roots and also to the least conscious part of ourselves. It symbolizes foundations, beginnings in life, what may have been experienced through parental inheritance and homeland influences, need for security and relationships with the home and family life; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imum_Coeli Wikipedia entry]

<div id="inconvenience"></div>'''''Inconvenience, The''''' 
3; Chums of Chance's hydrogen skyship; in [[Mason and Dixon]] H.M.S. Inconvenience was a ship that [[Fender-Belly Bodine]] once sailed in.

'''Inner American Sea''' 
71;

'''Innocence''' 
87; 223; 235; ''corrupting youth'', 335; 362; 416; Chums of Chance, 418; 502; mathematicians, 540; "hunger for young bodies" 581; 674;

'''''Interdikt, das''''' 
690; 200-mile phosgene (poison gas) line

'''Interface''' 
53-54;

'''inukshuk''' 
126;

'''Invisibility''' 
43; "a sacred condition" 43; desks, 39; hawk, 55; "intervals of" 61; "emerged from" 62; "the pale invisible" 64; detectives at Colorado mines, 92; duster, 94; "window into" for Kit Traverse, 99; "...distance" 106; Islands disappearing, 108; fireworks, 112; "imperceptable war" 122; extra man, 125; 127; invisible heckler, 133; Hidden People, 134; 135; 142; 144; 150; 153; 160; 163; Fleetwood, 164; home, 165; 176; Major Arcana, 223; 242; 245; 249; 252; 266; chili's, 289; 327; workers at I.J. & K. Smokefoot, 345-46; in New Orleans, 369; 522; Chums of Chance, 549; Invisiblism, 625; 627; cloak of invisibility, 716;

'''Ipsow, Ray''' 
29; colleague of Professor Heino Vanderjuice of Yale University;

'''Ironworkers Union''' 
43;

'''Isafjoror''' 
125;

'''Isandhlwana''' 
22; "massacre of British troops at"; On January 22, 1879, Isandlwana 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, and the regimental colours were lost; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana Wikipedia entry]

'''Isola degli Specchi, aka Isle of Mirrors''' 
244; island of mirror-makers in Venice, 569;

'''Italian Troubles''' 
369; in New Orleans

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I

2006-11-22T09:34:11Z

Ian.stopher@dai.co.uk: Added reference to H.M.S. Inconvenience in M&D

'''Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca 245 - ca 325)''' 
232; also known as Iamblichus Chalcidensis, was a Greek neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy; 620; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_(philosopher) Wikipedia entry]

'''Iceland spar''' 
126; Iceland spar is a calcite, which gets its name from "chalix" the Greek word for lime, a most amazing and yet, most common mineral. It is one of the most common minerals on the face of the Earth, comprising about 4% by weight of the Earth's crust and is formed in many different geological environments. Iceland spar is basically clear cleaved fragments of completely colorless (ice-like) calcite, originally discovered and named after Eskifjord, Iceland where the calcite is found in basalt cavities. It best demonstrates the unique property of calcite called double refraction where, when a ray of light enters the crystal and due to calcite's unique optical properties, the ray is split into fast and slow beams. As these two beams exit the crystal they are bent into two different angles (known as angles of refraction) because the angle is affected by the speed of the beams. A person viewing into the crystal will see two images ... of everything; "The Book of..." 133; "paramorphoscopes of" 250; ''Schieferspath'', 305-06; Zombini's, 355; aka ''espato'' or ''espanto'', 375; double-refraction, 375; 387; 391; 437; 564; "expression in crystal form of Earth's velocity" 688; [http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/carbonat/calcite/calcite.htm From this website]

'''icosahedron''' 
565; polyhedron having 20 faces, but usually a regular icosahedron is implied, which has equilateral triangles as faces. [Etymology: 16th Century: from Greek eikosaedron, from eikosi twenty + -edron -hedron]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosahedron Wikipedia entry]

'''Ictibus, The Phenominal Dr.''' 
344; "and His Safe-Deflector Hat"; ictibus is the ablative case for the Latin word "ictus" meaning a "blow" or "strike" - thus, away from a strike, appropriately

[[image:Tarot_Judgement.jpg|thumb|Judgement|right]]'''Icosadyad''' 
227; "they are the ones most capable of damage"; Greek: Icosa- = 20; Dyad, according to the Pythagoreans, is the principle of "twoness" or "otherness" and, generally, is any two entities regarded as a unit; in the Tarot context, "icosadyad" would refer a doubling of Number XX of the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, Judgement; 231; 496; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_(Tarot_card) Wikipedia entry]

'''Idiom Neutral''' 
533; an international auxiliary language, published in 1902 by the International Academy of the Universal Language under the leadership of Waldemar Rosenberger, a St. Petersburg engineer; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom_Neutral Wikipedia entry]

'''I.G.L.O.O.''' 
122; Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation, a "radiational clearinghouse in Northern Alaska"

'''''Imbottigliata''''' 
28; Italian = bottled;

'''Imperium of Steam''' 
567; 680;

'''''Imum Coeli''''' 
406; In astrology, the ''Imum Coeli'' (Latin for "bottom of the sky"), IC, is the point in space where the ecliptic crosses the meridian in the north, exactly opposite the Midheaven. It is said to refer to our roots and also to the least conscious part of ourselves. It symbolizes foundations, beginnings in life, what may have been experienced through parental inheritance and homeland influences, need for security and relationships with the home and family life; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imum_Coeli Wikipedia entry]

<div id="inconvenience"></div>'''''Inconvenience, The''''' 
3; Chums of Chance's hydrogen skyship; in [[Mason and Dixon]] H.M.S. Inconvenience was a ship that [[Fender-Belly Bodine]] once sailed in.

'''Inner American Sea''' 
71;

'''Innocence''' 
87; 223; 235; ''corrupting youth'', 335; 362; 416; Chums of Chance, 418; 502; mathematicians, 540; "hunger for young bodies" 581; 674;

'''''Interdikt, das''''' 
690; 200-mile phosgene (poison gas) line

'''Interface''' 
53-54;

'''inukshuk''' 
126;

'''Invisibility''' 
43; "a sacred condition" 43; desks, 39; hawk, 55; "intervals of" 61; "emerged from" 62; "the pale invisible" 64; detectives at Colorado mines, 92; duster, 94; "window into" for Kit Traverse, 99; "...distance" 106; Islands disappearing, 108; fireworks, 112; "imperceptable war" 122; extra man, 125; 127; invisible heckler, 133; Hidden People, 134; 135; 142; 144; 150; 153; 160; 163; Fleetwood, 164; home, 165; 176; Major Arcana, 223; 242; 245; 249; 252; 266; chili's, 289; 327; workers at I.J. & K. Smokefoot, 345-46; in New Orleans, 369; 522; Chums of Chance, 549; Invisiblism, 625; 627; cloak of invisibility, 716;

'''Ipsow, Ray''' 
29; colleague of Professor Heino Vanderjuice of Yale University;

'''Ironworkers Union''' 
43;

'''Isafjoror''' 
125;

'''Isandhlwana''' 
22; "massacre of British troops at"; On January 22, 1879, Isandlwana 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, and the regimental colours were lost; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana Wikipedia entry]

'''Isola degli Specchi, aka Isle of Mirrors''' 
244; island of mirror-makers in Venice, 569;

'''Italian Troubles''' 
369; in New Orleans

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