Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

I

2014-04-29T03:58:13Z

Pschmid1: added more pages referring to & describing the Interdikt ~~~~

'''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]

'''Ibargüengoitia, Adolfo "El Reparador"''' 
988; "newly-emerged entrepreneur"; El Reparador = Spanish: The Fixer; name possibly connected to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Ibarg%C3%BCengoitia Jorge Ibargüengoitia] (1928-1983), a Mexican novelist and playwrite.

'''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. This special form of calcite became highly prized among scientists and optical instrument makers because it is quite transparent (colorless) and flawless and occurs in huge crystals (up to 7 meters long). Iceland spar is also found in Mexico (Guanajuato), Siberia, Missouri and elsewhere, but the single deposit at Helgustaðir in eastern Iceland was the world's chief source from 1668 to the early 20th century. See [http://www.nagt.org/files/nagt/jge/abstracts/Kristjansson_v50n4p419.pdf this article in PDF format] for an excellent account of the properties, importance and history of Iceland spar. This mineral 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. Note that the text of the dust jacket of the book is split into three, not two overlapping images. A strategic mineral during WWII used for the sighting equipment of bombardiers and gunners. See [http://www.galleries.com/minerals/carbonat/calcite/calcite.htm this website.] There is a nifty Java applet [http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/birefringence/index.html here] that demonstrates what Iceland Spar looks like when it refracts something and another [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm here] that shows actual Iceland Spar at work. Also of interest is the fact that some scientists and historians have argued that the "sunstone," a mysterious item that mentioned in Norse sagas which aided Viking sailors in navigation, might be Iceland Spar. There exists [http://www.polarization.com/viking/viking.html a page] that lays out the basis of the theory, though without much detail as to how the process would work. A [http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/469/2153/20120651.abstract paper by Le Floch et al.] demonstrates that calcite crystals like one found in a 1592 wreck could be used as effective sun-compasses; as [http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21573088-mineral-found-shipwreck-was-ancient-form-compass-crystal-gazing a summary of the paper] explains, looking through a sample of the mineral reveals the direction of light polarisation in the sky, hence the sun's direction, within 5° or even better. "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;

[[image:Tarot_Judgement.jpg|thumb|Judgement|right]]'''Icosadyad''' 
225; the "Company of Twenty-two," meaning the Major Arcana in the Tarot deck. "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—except that in our context we're to read 20 + 2 instead of 20 x 2; 231; 496; 900; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_(Tarot_card) Wikipedia entry]

'''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

'''Idiocy / Idiots''' 
[[Idiots and Idiocy in Against the Day|All references to such in ''Against the Day'']]

'''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"

'''Illyria''' 
816; Illyria (Albanian Iliria "Land of the Free"; Ancient Greek Ἰλλυρία; Latin Illyricum) was in Classical antiquity a region in the western part of today's Balkan Peninsula, founded by the tribes and clans of Illyrians, an ancient people who spoke the Illyrian languages. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyria Wikipedia entry];

'''images of creatures''' 
277; The ancient Puebloans of both the Mesa Verde and Chaco centers left numerous images, called petroglyphs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph]. They include figures of humans and other creatures, and of comets and the 1054 supernova now known as the Crab Nebula.

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

'''Imi and Ernö''' 
908; would-be abductors of Dally

'''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 & Dixon]]'' H.M.S. Inconvenience was a ship that [[Fender-Belly Bodine]] once sailed in. Another possible source for the skyship's name can be found in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=O Patrick O'Brian's] 1988 novel, ''The Letter of Marque'', from a scene in which the naval surgeon Stephen Maturin remarks to a British admiral, "We were speaking of balloons, sir, and you were trying to recollect the details of a device you had thought of for doing away with the inconvenience, the mortal inconvenience, of rising too high." (p. 3875, ''The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels'', W. W. Norton, 2004).

'''Inner American Sea''' 
71;

'''Innocence''' 
87; 148; 151; 153; 203; 219; 223; "Innocent bourgeois lives," 235; ''corrupting youth'', 335; 362; 371; 416; Chums of Chance, 418; 444; 502; mathematicians, 540; "hunger for young bodies" 581; 674;

'''Insh'allah''' 
750; the name Yashmeen signs with in a letter to her father; "learned when and when not to whisper ''Insh'allah''" 760; In šaʾ Allāh (إن شاء الله) is an Arabic term evoked by Arabic speakers to indicate hope for an aforementioned event to occur in the future. The phrase translates into English as "God willing" or "If it is God's will". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insha'Allah Wikipedia]

'''''Interdikt, das''''' 
690; 200-mile phosgene (poison gas) line: "'[Werfner's] plan [...] is insanely to install all across the Peninsula, from a little east of Sofia, here, roughly along the Balkan Range and the Sredna Gora, coincident with the upper border of the former Eastern Roumelia, and continuing on, at last to the Black Sea ''das Interdikt'', as he calls it, two hundred miles long, invisible, waiting for certain unconsidered footfalls and, once triggered, irreversible—pitiless. . . .'"; 946; 952-53;

'''Interface''' 
53-54;

'''inukshuk''' 
126; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry]

<div id="invert">'''Invert, Jenny'''</div>
866; wife of Ratty McHugh and president of the Inanimate Bird Association chapter; see also [[ATD_864-891#Page_866|p. 866 annotation]].

'''Invisibility''' 
"a sacred condition" 43; desks, 39; hawk, 55; "intervals of" 61; "emerged from" 62; "the pale invisible" 64; of the wind, 75; 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; Anarchists' "''greater invisibility''" 976;
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisibility Wikipedia entry]

'''Ipsow, Ray''' 
29; colleague of Professor Heino Vanderjuice of Yale University; in Latin, ''re ipso'' translates to "the thing itself."

'''Ironworkers Union''' 
43; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_of_Bridge%2C_Structural%2C_Ornamental_and_Reinforcing_Iron_Workers Wikipedia entry]

'''Irredentist''' 
254; In Italian politics (after 1878), an adherent of the party which advocated the recovery and union to Italy of all Italian-speaking districts subject to other countries (OED).

'''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;

'''Isvolsky, Alexander Petrovich (1856-1919)''' 
809; Russian statesman; [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Alexander_Petrovich_Isvolsky 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica]

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

'''Ivanoff, Nikola''' 
963; his "Second Army"; Ivanoff (or Ivanov) commanded Bulgaria's 2nd Army during the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Balkan_War Second Balkan War]. The war began when Bulgarian high command, without notifying the government, ordered Bulgarian troops to attack Serbian and Greek positions. Bulgaria hoped to acquire all of Macedonia and dominate the Balkans. The 2nd Army was tasked with an attack towards Greek positions towards Salonika.

'''I Zingari''' 
966; "team of nomads" in cricket; I Zingari (from the Italian for "the Gypsies" - should be "Gli zingari") is an English amateur cricket club which was formed on 4 July 1845 by a group of old Harrovians at a dinner party and thus is one of the oldest cricket clubs still in existence. "Harrovians" are graduates of the Harrow School, (originally: The Free Grammar School of John Lyon; generally: Harrow), one of the world's most famous schools. It is an independent school for boys, located in Harrow on the Hill in the London Borough of Harrow.

{{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}

ATD 397-428

2007-01-15T17:09:27Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 419 */

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

==Page 397==

'''syntonic wireless''' 
syn·ton·ic (sĭn-tŏn'ĭk) adj.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.
[From Greek suntonos, high-strung, intense, attuned, from sunteinein, to draw tight : sun-, syn- + teinein, to stretch.]

'''street-Arab''' 
a homeless boy who has been abandoned and roams the streets.
[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn]

'''Columbian ''Half-Dollar''''' 
The 1892 Columbian Exposition half dollar was the first commemorative coin authorized by Congress. [http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/commemoratives/index.cfm?flash=yes&action=premodern]

'''"ten yeeuhz ago"'''
Places this action in or around 1903.

==Page 398==

'''nuncio''' 
Casually, a messenger; more formally, a permanent official Papal representative at a foreign court.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
"at evening quarters the guns are cast" ... A Sailor's Story

'''H.G. Wells''' 
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), one of the 19th Century science fiction writers whom Pynchon is both emulating and parodying in ''ATD''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.G._Wells Wikipedia entry].

'''jeu d'esprit''' 
French: play of wit. "H. G. Wells speculative jeu d'esprit" refers specifically to his work The Time Machine.

'''on the subject''' 
On the subject of time machines.

'''National Imprest''' 
An imprest system is a system using loans as control against fraud and theft. The most common imprest system known is the petty cash system.Wikipedia. Interesting that the Chums' petty cash system goes
under the rubric National, not International?

'''"Plug" Loafsley''' 
Plug-ugly loafer/oaf?

'''Lollipop Lounge''' 
Lollipop is vulgar slang for an underage girl. There is at least one 'pornographic' magazine called Lollipops featuring supposedly underage girls.

'''Tenderloin''' 
2) A city district notorious for vice and graft. [After 'the Tenderloin', an area of New York City (from the easy income it once offered corrupt policeman)
From the American Heritage Dictionary.

'''squalid empire''' 
Cf Alan Parker's 1976 movie "Bugsy Malone". [http://imdb.com/title/tt0074256/ IMDb]

==Page 399==

'''indigo... yellow''' 
Clashing-colors motif.

'''dicer''' 
???

'''opopanax and vervain''' 
Two fragrant, medicinal substances derived from flowering plants. They bloom yellow and violet, respectively. Wikipedia pages for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opoponax opopanax] and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vervain vervain].
:Though Wikipedia prefers the spelling ''opoponax'', the ''OED'' suggests Pynchon's.

'''slide cornet''' 
A brass instrument with the voice of a cornet but using a slide instead of valves. Very, very rare.

'''mandola''' 
An eight-stringed instrument shaped like a mandolin but tuned the same as a viola. It is originally an Irish instrument.

'''"tin pan" piano''' 
A reference to New York's Tin Pan Alley. Probably, the tag means to indicate that the piano was out of tune or sounded 'cacophonous'. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pan_alley Wikipedia entry]

'''houris''' 
According to the ''OED'', a "nymph of the Muslim Paradise. Hence applied allusively to a voluptuously beautiful woman." According to the American Heritage Dictionary, "houris" is the plural of 'houri', as defined above.

'''Darby''' 
Over 21yo, if he's aged.

==Page 400==

'''paillettes''' 
2. a spangle used to ornament a dress or costume. [from Old French,diminutive of
paille,straw]. American Heritage Dictionary.

'''louche''' 
of questionable taste or morality. From Old French, losche= squint-eyed,
ultimately from Latin, luscus = blind in one eye. Source: American Heritage Dictionary.

'''"jazz"''' 
The ''OED'' suggests that the spelling here was always more popular than ''jass'', as used on [[Pages 358-373#Page 370|p. 370]]. It makes sense that a musician like "Dope" Breedlove might use a less conventional spelling, as he would be familiar with the term before common usage had regularized its spelling. By contrast, within the "dime novel" idiom of the Chums of Chance narration (dime novelists not necessarily being, especially in this days, the swingin'-est of cats), while ''jazz'' still registers as a slang term, its spelling has already been regularized.

'''Dey high-hats us uptown''' 
They scorn or snub us.

'''Dey low-balls us downtown''' 
They underestimate us.

'''Missus Grundy''' 
Mrs. Grundy, proverbial looker-askance at any improper activity. "[A]n extremely conventional or priggish person" after a character alluded to in the play ''Speed The Plough,'' by Thomas Morton (1764-1838), British playwright. Source: American Heritage Dictionary.

''''ying'''' 
"Yen"? And play/contrast with yang?

==Page 401==

'''Angela Grace''' 
I.e., Angel of Grace

'''Gophiz... Hudson Dustuhs''' 
Gophers, Hudson Dusters.

'''bushwahs''' 
Bourgeois.

'''slickin up''' 
Gentrification.

'''Mr. Mawgin''' 
J. Pierpont Morgan.

'''stanchion''' 
Upright structural member, here part of the El trestle.

'''find it''' 
(Small-penis joke.)

'''time-corroded''' 
Actually, on [[ATD 149-170#Pages 154-155|p. 154]] we learn that when these structures were erected, they were intentionally antiqued, "deliberately burned, attempts being made to blacken the stylized wreckage in aesthetic and interesting ways," a description that applies also to Pynchon's historical fiction with its antiquated language and its generally favorable view of all things black. Though, of course it's been a decade since the shrine was erected, and some actual time-corrosion may have occurred.

'''seeming to date from some ancient catastrophe, far older than the city.''' 
When, what is that catastrophe in ATD, pages 149-170?

'''I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY''' 
Phrase first appears on [[ATD 149-170#Pages 154-155|p. 154]], where it is inscribed over the shrine that the citizens erect to the Destroyer. It is a quote from Canto III of Dante's ''Il Inferno,'' where it is emblazoned over the gates to Hell.

'''triatomic''' 
I.e., ozone or O3, which is a molecule composed of three bonded oxygen molecules. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone Wikipedia.]

==Page 402==

'''solenoidal relay''' 
Solenoid: a coil of wire hollow in the center. To make a relay, stick an iron rod partway into the middle. Turn the current on, and the magnetic field pulls the iron in. Attach the rod to the bolt on the gate and you can unlock it by pushing a button.

'''Dr. Zoot''' 
homage to Zoot Sims, jazzman? 
Most often combined with Suit, as in
Zoot suit - Wikipedia. Often zoot suiters wear a felt hat with a long feather (called a tapa or ... By their dress, Zoot suiters expressed defiance, at a time when fabric was ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_suit
There is a contemporary "zootsuit" radio station devoted to old radio shows. Historically, much later than the period of ATD here, there were riots in Los Angeles called the Zoot Suit riots.

'''pale''' 
Even tough-guy Plug fears time machine.
Pynchon's perspective on artificial light, "already harsh illumination".

'''dynamo''' 
Early electrical generator with permanent magnet instead of stator winding.

'''Grandmother's day''' 
Pre-Civil War.

'''Breguet''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. (See also p.140) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''shimming''' 
Insertion of thin material to make two parts line up. Think of the matchbook under the table leg.

'''revenue diverted''' 
(Why not no-revenue?)because revenue was spent---very cheaply: in only "the simplest upkeep."

==Page 403==

'''coaming''' 
Bodywork. Panels concealing frame, wiring, etc.

'''undog this hatch''' 
Nautical: disengage whatever is holding the door shut.

'''faith''' 
(Blind, not humble.)

'''nervous organizations''' 
Cf drugs. Cf. sympathetic vibrations, a physical kind of empathy.

'''pillioned''' 
Riding two to a horse.

'''horses''' 
???

'''arrays of metallic points''' 
???

==Page 404==

'''shockwaves of the Creation''' 
Anachronistic Big Bang theory? 
I must say that in the Big Bang theory, stars
were first created out of the bang; here the metaphor seems to accept that the stars already exist and "are blown through by the shockwaves of the Creation", capitalized, a common Pynchon touch, as in a Biblical allusion.

'''chamber shook''' 
(It didn't on p403.)

'''not beasts''' 
Airplanes?
Or Missiles/rockets? 'A screaming comes across the sky'....

'''smell''' 
Cf GR on Passchendaele.

==Page 405==

'''latest Oldsmobile''' 
(Dates.)

'''Candlebrow U.''' 
Candle = 2)Abbr. c)Pysics a)an obsolete unit of luminous intensity, originally defined in terms of a wax candle,From American Heritage Dictionary. Brow = 3)The projecting upper edge of a steep place, as 'the brow of a hill'. Also, of course, the eyebrow, the forehead. Same source.

Probably too tenuous to lead anywhere: Asa ''Candler's'' family became implausibly rich through ownership of Coca-Cola stock; Candlers and their Woodruff connections gave implausible sums to Emory University in Atlanta. See Candlebrow and Smegmo entries on the next couple of pages.

Note: "Dr. Vormance was on sabbatical from Candlebrow University..." p.130

'''double-domes''' 
'dome' is slang for the human brain, of course. [Amer Heritage] and seems to mean, in humorous context, two-headed or double-brained thinkers...(more doubling motif--as joke?)

'''drumming''' 
Traveling salesmanship.

'''river called the Ball in Hand''' 
Another cricket allusion? Dried river beds are often used as a playground for cricket, says wikipedia, where this also comes: When a batsman attempts a dangerous run, he could be run out by any of the fielders who just need to hold the ball in hand [cannot underline or embolden] and land their feet on the stone at the bowlers end (hence run out by 'conduction', as opposed to hitting the stumps at the bowlers end).

(Any connection with Skip, the ball lightning? p.73/74.)

'''The Ball In Hand''' see page 409, where it seems to be Alonzo's local tavern.

'''Alonzo Meatman''' 
???

==Page 406==

'''counterfeit of the Timeless''' 
Thematic. Whole sentence seems the sharpest indictment of 'the Academy' as exemplified by Candlebrow U.

'''fatal discovery''' 
Note the contrast with "fateful discovery" on p.398.

'''''Imum Coeli''''' 
Latin for "bottom of the sky." In Astrology, it is the point in space where the ecliptic crosses the meridian in the north, exactly opposite the Midheaven. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imum_Coeli Wikipedia entry]

'''Gideon Candlebrow''' 
made-up founder whose scandalous fortune underlay Candlebrow U?

'''Grossdale''' 
a gross dale?

==Page 407==

'''"Smegmo"''' 
Smegma is a secretion of mammalian genitals [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smegma Wikipedia].

'''margarine''' 
1887 saw the introduction of the Margarine Act in Great Britain, which required margarine to be labeled as such. This was in response to the adulteration of butter by oleomargarine (made from animal fats).

Candlebow + margarine reminds me of Camille Paglia on Renee Zellwegger as "margarine-browed" (which I don't really understand).

'''four thousand years''' 
Refers to the time believed to have elapsed since Abraham and the foundation of Judaism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham Wikipedia]. Under kosher laws Jews are not allowed to mix milk and meat products in the same meal. The rabbi's proclamation about having waited 4000 years refers to the arrival of Smegmo as a non-milk substitute for butter that can be eaten with meat dishes.

'''"you kept hearing different stories about exactly what was in it"''' 
Refers to wide range of urban legend-like attributions as to the origins and/or makeup of smegma that exist especially among children.

There's a resonance with Coca-Cola, too: exaggerated secrecy about the formula, fanatical market development, endowment of a university (Emory in the case of the Woodruff and Candler fortunes).

'''First International Conference on Time-Travel''' 
MIT students held a [http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/ Time Traveler Convention] on May 7, 2005. The organizers did only modest publicity, claiming that the event would be reported and people in the future would read about it and decide to attend. One of the principals pointed out that only one such convention would ever need to take place. Vanderjuice's reasoning is almost a mirror image of that.

'''this year''' 
???

'''flammivomous''' 
Invented word? "Vomiting flame." Not invented: Flammivomous. (definition) by Webster 1913 (print), Tue Dec 21 1999 at 23:41:04. Flam*miv"o*mous (?), a. [L. flammivomus; flamma flame + vomere to vomit.] ...

'''1925 or thereabouts''' 
Lindsay's unfamiliarity with the term "nooky," here used to refer to attractive women and not to a sex act, its most common present day usage, will likely continue until it becomes an accepted part of the English language, which occurred, according to the ''OED'', with its first substantiative written usage in 1928. The ''OED'', by the way, prefers the spelling ''nookie''.

'''Randolph''' 
(Has he been absent?)

==Page 408==

'''telegraphic messages''' 
(Why at night, particularly? Email parody?) Seems many telegraphic messages were delivered at night, perhaps because they could be picked up during the daytime and many came after evening began.

'''"Goes with everything"''' 
Cf Al Capp's Shmoos?

'''in the way that certain odors can instantly return us to earlier years''' 
Recalls Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu in which the taste and smell of a madeleine cookie summons a collection of childhood memories.

'''"There's a seminar on that tomorrow ... Or do I mean day before yesterday?"''' 
Are all the folks at Candlebrow time travellers? Unlikely. This remark seems to be a typical collegiate witticism about classes. Seems about everyone can STUDY time travelling at Candlebrow.

'''Finney Hall''' 
Probably a Hall/Auditorium/Room in Candlebrow U. named after American author Jack Finney, who wrote a famous time travel novel, Time & Again. See wikipedia for dates.

'''florescent''' 
flowering, blooming.From florescense. Amer Heritage Dictionary

==Page 409==

'''Gibson Girls''' 
From illustrations of a kind of woman first made by Charles Dana Gibson. Besides certain physical features--see wikipedia---such women were thought
to be 'independent', often college girls, although not suffragettes.

'''"Why you insufferable little --"''' 
This line, paired with St. Cosmo's observation at the end of the following paragraph: "And might I add, Mr. Noseworth, that these constant attempts to strangle Suckling do our public image little good," seem a fairly direct reference to a well-worn trope from the ''Simpsons'', in which the splenetic Homer, as played here by Noseworth, expresses his no-longer-controllable frustration with Bart, here the increasingly smartalecky Suckling. Pynchon, as has been widely reported, has appeared on ''The Simpsons'' a couple times.

More than even "Vineland," it seems, this book is fraught with pop culture/low comedy asides. 

'''Wellesianism''' 
Typo, unless he means Orson.

'''Asimov Transecular''' 
Interesting to find one of Isaac Asimov's time travel machines on the pile of "picked-over hulks of failed time machines." Of course, it would have to have been deposited there from some time in the future.

to transecular adj "that is made through the centuries" (Portuguese) [[User:Btchakir|Btchakir]] 16:48, 19 December 2006 (PST)

'''Tempomorph''' 
Tempo + morph = Time change

'''Q-98s''' 
FM station?

'''vulcanite''' 
Star Trek allusion? A kind of mineralized rubber.

'''Heusler's alloy''' 
???

'''bonzoline''' 
Synthetic ivory, used to make billiard balls.

'''electrum''' 
An alloy of gold and silver, presumably not the same as ''argentaurum''.

'''lignum vitae''' 
The very hard heavy wood of any of several tropical American guaiacum trees. In Latin, literally "wood of life."

'''platinoid''' 
???

'''magnalium''' 
Magnesium-aluminum alloy.

'''packfong silver''' 
???

'''The Ball in Hand''' 
''Double'' (if not more) ''entendre'': 1. Masturbation. 2. A term used in pocket billiards (especially 9-ball) when a player has scratched (sunk the cue ball) and the player who follows is allowed to place the cue ball wherever he/she wants.

'''safe harbor''' 
Paradoxical, I think.

'''automorphic''' 
auto = Self,same. Morph = to change

'''Eternal Return''' 
A fascinating interpretation of history in which Time is a single cycle and once it has reached its conclusion begins anew, and each repetition of the cycle is utterly identical to the first. Perhaps originating in ''The New Science'' by Giambattista Vico, though made most famous by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who used it as the basis for his moral philosophy. Cf. Nietzsche, ''The Will to Power''.

==Page 410==

'''revenance''' seems obviously related to revenant, a ghost a returner from the dead
???

'''River of Time''' 
cf "the invisible river, the flow of Time", p.252

'''Symmes Street''' possible reference to the Symme's Hole which leads into the hollow earth, i. e. a street on the extreme fringe
???

'''gaslit''' 
Lightfuel motif.

'''St. Louis Fair''' 
1904.

Also "Pygmy boyfriends escaped from the St. Louis Fair" - in the book Ota Benga, about a pygmy who appeared in the St. Louis Fair, there is a reference to pygmies escaping from their exhibit and disappearing into neighborhoods of St. Louis, never to be found

'''fantan''' 
Traditional Chinese gambling game; also a card game [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan-Tan].

'''"preserver"''' 
Gun?

'''magenta-and-green''' 
Clashing-colors motif.

==Page 411==

'''Finding of Unusual Circumstances Questionaire''' 
Also, presumably, known as the "F.U.C.Q." or "fuck-you," for short.

'''Hawaiian''' 
???

'''Zennist''' 
Practitioners of Zen Buddhism.

'''''Caged Women of Yokohama''''' 
???

==Page 412==

'''"Does a dog possess the Buddha-nature?" [...] "Yes, obviously"''' 
According to the Zen parable the answer to the question is "Mu", which is both "No" and the sound of a dog's bark, thus neither simply yes nor no. See the explanantion given by the Learned English Dog in Mason & Dixon (Ch. 3, p. 22).

'''apricot and aquamarine''' 
Clashing-colors motif.

'''Bohr... Mach... Einstein... Spengler... Wells... McTaggart''' 
All of these people did work involving either speculation about time (Wells) or other subjects that reached their highest expression in Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which had implications regarding the nature of time and spacetime [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity Wikipedia]. Pynchon refers to the fact that this work was underway and 'in the air' at the time of the novel.

'''young Einstein''' 
Perhaps a reference to the 1988 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Einstein movie] of the same name. At the time of the F.I.C.O.T.T. (1895 at the earliest), Einstein would have already published "[http://www.worldscibooks.com/phy_etextbook/4454/4454_chap1.pdf The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields]." Ironically, Einstein's special theory of relativity would later essentially invalidate theories of luminiferous aether.

'''neo-Augustinian''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions''], is credited with reconceptualizing the notion of time in Christian terms. Throyle, on [[ATD 119-148#Page 143|p.143]], summarizes what he terms "Christian time," as a "linear way of regarding time, a simple straight line from past, through present, into the future." See also [[ATD E|'''Eschatology''']].

'''fatal steamed pudding''' 
Presumably the subject of the "Christmas-pudding controversy" mentioned on p. 406. In the context of Prof. Taggart's disbelief in time and the Augustinian's presumed belief that time moves inevitably toward Christ's return, a Christmas pudding (which, one should mention, is prepared with suet or similar animal fat, though presumably Smegmo can be substituted) is a symbol, insofar as it invokes the birth of Christ, of a pivotal moment in the proper sequence of Augustinian time. The pudding, which context here suggests the neo-Augustinian dropped on the McTaggartite, at once symbolizes the Fall of Man, as well as the McTaggartite's inevitable descent into Hell. The whole arrangement is problematized, however, by the comments of the County Coroner, who describes the outcome of the event dependent on "wagering," chance being irreconcilable with Augustinian time.

'''vertical distance''' 
Of pudding-drop?

'''Old Stearinery Bell Tower''' 
???

==Page 413==

'''322 feet''' 
???

'''disordered''' 
Eg clocktower assassins?

'''homeopathist''' one who practices homeopathy
???

'''"the ''lycopodium'' type"... Fear''' lycopodium is a common homeopathic remedy for many disorders. Homeopathy being the introduction into the body, in small quantities, of a possibly toxic or irritating agent that ends up stimulating the body to heal itself
???

'''sky-brother''' 
???

'''other Promise... resurrected... two millennia''' 
???

'''speaking trumpet''' 
invented by Thomas Edison in 1878

==Page 414==

'''purlieus''' outskirts, outlying areas; also (OED) "meaner streets about some main thoroughfare; a mean, squalid or disreputable street or quarter."

This whole section is a progress into the outlying areas, the fringes
(Cf. Pynchon's story ''Low-lands'', which takes place at a town dump)

'''millwork''' 
woodwork, doors, molding, wainscotting, etc, but cheap, prefabricated, not custom-fabricted on site.

'''penumbrae''' 
(Is the ligatured-ae appropriate here?). Yes, it is the plural; each streetlight has its own penumbra.

'''interfered with''' 
Sexually molested.

'''vacant''' 
(So signs of occupancy are faked?)

'''dust''' 
(Clear sign of vacancy.)

'''systematically deluded''' 
Cf Descartes.

'''quiescence''' 
(Meatman is cyborg?)

==Page 415==

'''"Mr. Ace"''' 
Master race; ace of spades; Mr Earl?

'''phatic''' 
Relating to speech that serves to establish social relationships rather than to inform.

'''denounced''' 
(Capitalism has failed but failure still can't be mentioned.)

Taking of refuge in a planet's past was the plot of a Captain Kirk-era Star Trek episode; the unintentionally-transported Kirk is taken to be a religious dissenter; fortunately his judge is one of the "refugees".

'''certain of your great dynamos''' 
???

'''Fraternity of the Venturesome''' 
Mistranslated 'Chums of Chance'.

'''''nzzt''''' 
Electrical short?

Suggests "he" could be a holographic image. Time traveling holograms were one feature of the "Temporal Cold War" subplot of ''Star Trek: Enterprise''; one such manifestation (complete with "nzzt's") is set in a huge dynamo station in a Nazi-occupied New York. This is two possible ''Star Trek'' allusions in a single page.

'''mission assignments''' 
Pynchon seems to explain Chums backstory.

==Page 416==

'''Squanto and the Pilgrims''' 
???

Ironic (although Chick means it sincerley) since in this case the Chums of C are "Squanto" and their strange interlocutors from another dimension are the pilgrims. Chick innocently suggests that the strangers from the future just want help ( as , like the pilgrims, they have just arrived and are low on supplies, so to speak). It is implied that just as the Indian's helping the pilgrims was re-payed with disease, genocide and war, the payback the Chums reap for helping these visitors from another dimension may not be what they expect.

'''"It's our innocence...."''' 
Speculation about the motives of people who come from the future claiming to need something from the past. It is a common fallacy in all ages to think back to the past as a 'golden age' and an age of 'innocence'. Lindsay elaborates further down the page: "[I]magine ''them''... so fallen, so corrupted, that we — even we — seem to them pure as lambs. And their own time so terrible that it's sent them desparately back...." Think also of the kind of 'golden age' rhetoric often employed by certain politicians.

==Page 417==

'''"we're totally--"''' 
...fucked.

'''"He is not what he says he is."''' 
Pynchon denies Chums backstory/explanation.

In addition, his story would be plausible--almost too plausible--in terms of the thermodynamic theories of the day, i.e. the Heat Death of the Universe (about which Pynchon has written before: see ''V.'' and ''Entropy'').

'''trespassers''' 
Presumably individuals in the company of Mr. Ace and Alonzo Meatman, whose intentions toward the Chums of Chance are apparently sinister and for their own benefit. They appear to travel back through the stream of time without any kind of permission to execute their plans, thus making them trespassers (or parasites).

The idea of trespass could be thought of in another way too. Miles mentions Mr. Ace knowing him as a 'peeper' who observes the trespassers as they come to his time. We could think of the 'trespassers' as anyone in any time who looks back at a point in history. As such, they are actually 'peepers'. That these seem to have found a way not just to peep but actually to participate makes them more than peepers, in fact, it is this that constitutes their 'trespass'.

Pynchon seems to be playing with how we view history and the past, a theme common to all his work. The Chums, whose existence is, to an extent, fictional even within the work of fiction, are a nexus meant to control boundaries between points in time (e.g. the future and the present, or its past). Historians and other future observers want to use the past for their own purposes. If they become visible to the people in that past, they will appear as 'trespassers' and violators. As Miles says, they do "not have our best interests in mind".

We ourselves (readers and perhaps even more, Wiki authors) are also trespassers from the standpoint of the Chums. We read about them in the novel, which takes us to the past, to their present, and inserts us in a way that is invisible to them. We then write up entries and think thoughts about what they do. We are in their world in some way that to them is utterly mysterious and sinister because, again, we have own agendas in mind and not theirs.

'''enigmatic object''' 
Plotpoint?

==Page 418==

'''Trespass''' 
With a capital T.

'''evidence... everywhere''' 
Cf ''Crying of Lot 49''.

'''neuropathy''' 
An abnormal and usually degenerative state of the nervous system or nerves.

'''contracts''' 
With Devil.

'''Other Units''' 
(So our five gossiped to others?)

'''exhaustive''' 
Cf Trekkies.

'''came to recall''' 
Cf PK Dick.

'''red and indigo''' 
Clashing?

==Page 419==

'''"El Capitán"''' 
Sousa march. "El Capitán" was played by a military band on the deck of Admiral Dewey's battleship as he steamed into the Bay of Manila in 1898, to "liberate" the Philippines from Spain and also, not coincidentally, achieve access for U.S. capital and goods to East Asian markets once the Philippines became a colony. Thus the references to the "intricacies of greed as then being practiced by global capitalism" a few sentences later on p. 419 is hardly out of place for TRP, particularly when mixed with comments on how patriotic bromides and marching tunes go together. The harmonicas and the comment that improvisation is definitely NOT welcome in marching band arrangements, of course, provide Pynchon's own inimitable caustic/satiric touch; cf. the kazoos in GR. On "El Capitán": see Hess, Carol A. “John Philip Sousa’s ‘El Capitan’: Political Appropriation and the Spanish-American War.” ''American Music'' (Spring 1998).

'''"Whistling Rufus"''' 
???

'''consecrated''' 
???

'''Richardson Romanesque''' 
Style of American Romanesque architecture from 1880s-1890s, named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson, notable for use of brown stone, rounded corners, arches and cylindrical turrets. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardson_Romanesque Wikipedia Entry].

'''modal theory''' 
Context is suggestive of music theory, types of scales and keys of tonal music. However, Modal Realism is the view, notably propounded by David Lewis, that possible worlds are as real as the actual world. Possible worlds exist; the actual world is merely one among an infinite set of logically possible worlds, some nearer to the actual world and some more remote. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism]

'''chit''' 
Piece of military or bureaucratic paperwork; context suggests "request for transfer".

'''Bing Spooninger''' 
Like "Bing" Crosby, a crooner.

'''rack''' 
Current military and collegiate slang for "bed"--an anachronism.

==Page 420==

'''every note''' 
Om?

'''say "Wall"''' 
???

'''difficult vocal feat''' 
???

'''cakewalk''' 
An African-American entertainment having a cake as prize for the most accomplished steps and figures in walking; also, a stage dance developed from walking steps and figures typically involving a high prance with backward tilt. From this, slang for a one-sided contest or an easy task.

'''draw-note''' 
Note played on harmonica by "drawing" air through reed by sucking in rather than blowing out (insert crude sex joke here).

==Page 421==

'''popularity''' 
Masochistic love of oppressors.

'''''cover identity''''' 
Burden of resistance.

'''Lombardy poplars.''' 
A large deciduous tree, reaching 30-40 m tall. They resemble large shrubs, due to their tall, slender appearance. They grow tall very quickly and usually die within 15 years of first planting.

'''Chromatic Harp''' 
A harmonica that plays all notes in an octave rather than a scale in a certain key. [http://www.hohnerusa.com/hchromatic.htm Examples].

'''Pitch Integrity Guard''' 
???

'''harmonica-reed files''' 
???

==Page 422==

'''I.G. Mundharfwerke''' 
Interessen-Gemeinschaft Mundharfwerke (Harmonica-works Association of Common Interests). "Mundharf" is Swabian German for "Harmonica".

'''drifted''' 
Cf. Slothrop's desk.

'''Offenbach''' 
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), French composer of operettas.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Offenbach Wikipedia Entry].

'''into the Latrine''' 
Cf. Slothrop's hallucination.

'''vapor bearing... minerals''' 
???

'''A.D.C.''' 
Aide-de-camp, administrative assistant to a commanding officer.

==Page 423==

'''None of them...''' 
Cf butterfly dreaming it's monk?

'''volunteer decoys''' 
Fan-meme.

'''"At a Georgia Camp Meeting"''' 
???

'''"deps"''' 
???

'''route out of the past''' 
The nostalgia trap.

==Page 424==

''''coon' material''' 
They enjoyed the jazzy parts of the routine.

'''isotropy''' 
???

'''presently''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Crumb R. Crumb] did a comic like this: [http://crumbproducts.com/prints_images/sha.gif pic]

'''opposition''' 
(Was unconscious, now conscious?)

'''dropped from altitudes''' 
(Cf pudding above)

==Page 425==

'''"After the Ball"''' 
lyric from a huge pop music hit of the time:
AFTER THE BALL
A little maiden climbed an old man’s knees—
Begged for a story: "Do uncle, please!
Why are you single, why live alone?
Have you no babies, have you no home?"
"I had a sweetheart, years, years ago,
Where she is now, pet, you will soon know;
List to the story, I’ll tell it all:
I believed her faithless after the ball.“
”Bright lights were flashing in the grand ballroom,
Softly the music playing sweet tunes.
There came my sweetheart, my love, my own,
‘I wish some water; leave me alone.’
When I returned, dear, there stood a man
Kissing my sweetheart as lovers can.
Down fell the glass, pet, broken, that’s all—
Just as my heart was after the ball.“
”Long years have passed, child, I have never wed,
True to my lost love though she is dead.
She tried to tell me, tried to explain—
I would not listen, pleadings were vain.
One day a letter came from that man;
He was her brother, the letter ran.
That’s why I’m lonely, no home at all—
I broke her heart, pet, after the ball."

Chorus:
After the ball is over, after the break of morn,
After the dancers' leaving, after the stars are gone,
Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all—
Source: Many the hopes that have vanished after the ball.

'''Bukhara''' 
Either the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Bukhara Emirate of Bukhara], a former country in Central Asia or its [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukhara capital]

'''T.D.Y.''' 
Abbrevation for Temporary Duty? [http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r614_11.pdf weblink]

'''''Saksaul''''' 
A plant/tree native to the deserts of Central Asia, particularly the Gobi desert; it has a very hard wood and is covered with knobs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxaul Wikipedia] [http://www.pbase.com/william_sokolenko/image/68724037 pic]

'''Q. Zane Toadflax''' 
(Sounds like Douglas Adams?). Toadflax is the name of an [http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/ent/biocontrol/weedfeeders/toadflax.html invasive plant species]

'''Hypopsammotic... Hypops''' 
Pure speculation, this one: Hypops seems to be used as a short plural for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypopnea hypopneoa], a medical condition described as 'shallow breathing'. "Ammotic" is used as an alternative term for 'amniotic', e.g. as "ammotic fluid". So Roswell's Hypopsammotic contraption would be a kind of protective cover which however causes shortbreathedness. So perhaps a sort of diving- or space-suit is implied? This one would be for sand-travel, of course.

==Page 426==

'''beating their prices''' 
Contradicts p. 425 "no further expenditure".
:P. 425 merely says that "no further expenditure for that purpose [i.e. for Hypops rigs] will be approved." Presumably, the Chums have some additional discretionary fund from which to draw cash for emergency purchases such as these.

==Page 427==

'''temporarily lapsing into English''' 
What language is Miles--the Chums---usually speaking?

'''''pigs fly''''' 
Lindsay = pig. "When (or until) pigs fly" = never.

'''legalistic''' 
Yes, Darby is now Legal Counsel.

==Page 428==

''ill-starred Bell Tower'' 
Cf. Renata's tarot reading on p. 253, the last card of which is The Tower. 
Cf. The Bell-Tower by Herman Melville, a famous story with an "ill-starred
bell tower" for sure. "Glancing backwards, they saw the groined belfry crashed sideways in.", a line from it which echos the picture used for the pynchonwiki home page.

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

ATD 296-317

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

==Page 296==

'''Rodgers Brothers''' 
???

'''Mescalero''' 
???

'''Timken springs''' 
Henry Timken was a carriage maker who held three patents for carriage springs in the 1890’s. He founded his company, The Timken Roller Bearing Axle Company, in St. Louis in 1899. He also invented the tapered roller bearings which bear his name and were used in the hubs of carriages and automobiles. The company still exists and Timken roller bearing are used today in a number if diverse industries including spacecraft. Oddly enough (maybe not so odd considering Pynchon), the modern day Timken company created for the Bosch Group (See the note above for “Hieronymous wheel” on page 292) a process to produce a high alloy steel that could easily be machined to make trucks parts.

'''Basin''' 
???

==Page 297==

'''Pandora works''' 
Mine and works between Tomboy and Telluride. See the [http://www.telluride.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=standard&categoryId=7&categoryType=2&subcategoryId=0 Telluride Places of Interest]

'''adits''' 
Underground mine with a horizontal entrance. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adit Wikipedia]

'''tommyknockers''' 
Mythical mine dwellers, originally part of European legend, introduced to America by European miners. The name "tommyknockers" comes from Cornish mining lore. According to legend the tommyknockers are underground spirits who guard the earth's ores, especially gold and silver. Tommyknockers were known for mischief, pranks, jokes, and being highly spirited. "Knockers" comes from knocking sounds heard in mines that were attributed to their antics. They are tiny characters who dress like little miners and perform many mining duties while underground working alongside miners. [http://www.blm.gov/heritage/HE_Kids/tommy_knock.htm BLM Website]

==Page 298==

'''''duendes''''' 
Spanish for goblins, trolls or leprechauns, http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duende.

==Page 299==

'''matte-surface''' 
Not shiny.

'''"...Sunday-morning voice..."''' 
sermonizing, righteous preacher-like voice?

To me, the context suggests whispering - as in church.

==Page 300==
'''"somthin tattooed on my head"''' 
Cf. Queequeg's tattoos in ''Moby-Dick'', Ch. 3 and ''passim''.

'''fragment of time''' 
Sparks move faster than shutter.

'''collodion''' 
Toxic chemical used both in early photography and explosives manufacturing.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion Wikipedia]

==Page 301==

'''squareheads''' 
Scandinavians, especially Swedes, are sometimes referred to as ''squareheads''. In HBO's ''Deadwood'', for example, the orphaned girl Sophia (whose Scandinavian family migrated from Minnesota) is the ''squarehead girl''.

'''"just tie the reins . . . their way back"''' 
Cf. p. 294, "rented horses had already been skillfully unhitching themselves and proceding back to the corral."

==Page 302==
'''ghost bison''' 
The American Buffalo was nearly hunted to extinction in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_buffalo#19th_century_Buffalo_hunts Wikipedia]

'''Gallows Frame Saloon''' 
The Gallows Frame is the structural frame, usually made of steel or timber, at the top of an underground mine shaft. These frames hold the hoisting equipment which raise and lower equipment and miners into the underground mine.

'''fathom miners''' 
As in: a mine's depth is measured in fathoms (1 = 6 ft.). Any miner who goes deep down? And therefore could stand a drink.

'''remittance men''' 
Black sheep paid regularly by families to stay away.

==Page 303==

'''Circassian walnut''' 
A swirled hardwood popular in woodworking, in this case used euphemistically to refer to a bar. Named for a region in the northern Caucasus Mountains from which the tree originates.

'''Charlie Fong Ding''' 
Seems like a made-up comic Chinese name by TRP.

'''congress... congregation''' 
Two vs more-than-two at a time

'''California Peg 
The "''sous-maitresse''," or teacher's aid, at the Silver Orchid brothel.

'''Grundyesque''' 
Prudish; after Mrs. Grundy, a character in Thomas Morton's ''Speed the Plow'', (1798)([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Grundy]). See page 400 on "Mrs. Grundy"

'''Popcorn Alley''' 

'''a range of useful information'''. 
Range again, as spectrum.

'''hurdy girl''' 
A professional dancing girl.

==Page 304==

'''civil war and White Terror''' 
The Finnish Civil War lasted from January-May 1918 and was fought between the conservative White and revolutionary Red factions of the army. After the Whites emerged victorious, they rounded up Red elements in prison camps where many died, hence the White Terror. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War Wikipedia.]

'''"Love", whatever that turned out to be, would occupy a whole different piece of range.''' conveys a whole new meaning to the word 'range'?...not just land but something like 'range of emotions"?
'Piece of range' as in a spectrum? Light exists in a spectrum.
Cf. 'Light over the ranges' indeed.

==Page 305==

'''"The Shooting of Dan McGrew"''' 
1907 poem by Canadian poet Robert Service, so anachronistic here. [http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheSpelloftheYukon/chap13.html etext]

'''ruffled doves''' 
A/k/a "soiled doves," a Western term for prostitutes.

'''Stephen Emmens''' 
American chemist and mining engineer, inventor of the explosive Emmensite, who believed an intermediate substance he called "argentaurum" was transmutable into silver or gold; he claimed to have discovered a process by which the gold content of silver could be thus enriched. He carried out his experiments from 1895 to 1897, and saw them made public in 1899. The details of the process, as far as they are known, are as Pynchon describes them. Attempts to enlist emminent scientists to verify Emmens' apparent alchemy included an offer to Nicola Tesla (He refused). [http://www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/alchem.html website].

'''"argentaurum"''' 
Substance claimed by Dr. Stephen Emmens to be intermediate beteween silver and gold, and through which, as an intermediate step, each could be transmuted to the other [http://www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/alchem.html website].

'''nymph's mirror''' 
???

'''''Schieferspath''''' 
Has nothing to do with paths; ''spath'' is German for ''spar.'' ''Schiefer'' indicates it is a foliated mineral. So: foliated spar, i.e., a spar that cleaves readily into sheets. ''Schieferspath'' doesn't seem to be a standard mineralogical term in modern German; "some of the visiting labor" may come from a place where calcite is mined under this name.

'''superstitious Scotchman''' 
Holding the nine of diamonds, [[ATD_1-25#Page_24|"the curse of Scotland,"]] he doesn't bet his hand but loses the specimen.

==Page 306==

'''''grown brighter''''' 
???

'''gold... silver''' 
Any role of Iceland Spar and double-refracted light in the Emmens process of transmutationis Pynchon's invention.

'''rhomboid''' 
???
Why the question marks? Any reason why the fragment should not be a rhomboid?

'''Veta Madre''' 
The "Mother Lode" of Mexico [http://www.mindat.org/loc-7776.html] in Guanajuato

==Page 307==

'''Lyman Gage''' 
Banker, and Secretary of the Treasury under McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, 1897-1902. In 1900 he ensured passage of the Gold Standard Act, which repealed bimatalism and had tremendous effects on the mining industry, and the economy in general, leading eventually to the foundation of the Federal Reserve System to regulate the currency in the wake of the resulting instability [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_J._Gage]. Just incidentally, Gage had been President of the Board of Directors of the Columbian Exposition.

'''like a kettle coming to a boil''' 
???

'''stopes''' 
void created by extracting ore underground

'''Charles Bonnet Syndrome'''

Named after the Swiss philosopher and naturalist, Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), who first described a syndrome in which visually-impaired people see vivid, complex images that aren't real. CBS is thought to result from visual deprivation, and commonly occurs in sufferers of macular degeneration and other impairments of the eyes. Importantly, CBS does not (clinically, cannot) result from any type of psychosis or dementia. Thus, those who experience CBS are otherwise "normal" people.

Remarkably, CBS is characterized often by bizarre and grotesque images: ghosts, elves, sprites, cartoon-like figures, disembodies faces, magical landscapes. According to Cliff Pickover, author of ''Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves'' (Smart Publications, 2005), "people affflicted with certain eye diseases give similar reports of beings from parallel universes." [http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/PublicWebsite/public_rnib003641.hcsp Royal National Institute of the Blind] [http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/Pickover/pc/bonnet.html Dr. Cliff Pickover Comments] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bonnet Wikipedia Wikipedia entry on Bonnet] --[[User:Jmanmiami|Jmanmiami]] 09:10, 1 December 2006 (PST)

'''Puckpool''' 
???

==Page 308==

'''macular degeneration''' 
Degeneration of the macula, the part of the retina responsible for the sharp, central vision needed to read or drive. A leading cause of vision loss and blindness in people aged 65 and older.

==Page 309==

'''Old Gideon''' 
???

'''A.T. Still''' 
"Father of American Osteopathic Medicine" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Taylor_Still.]

==Page 310==

'''''Jefe''''' 
Chief (Spanish).

==Page 311==

'''mind-poisoning vetches''' 
???

'''Edgar Hadley''' 
???

'''Margaret Perril''' 
???

'''blood diverted from its return''' 
Accurate but odd?

'''Trout Lake''' 
???

==Page 313==

'''tridigital''' 
Three fingers (measure of liquor).

'''packer's knife''' 
???

==Page 314==

'''Dutch Waltz''' 
???

'''centrifugal''' 
Pulling away from center.

==Page 315==

'''Railbird Saloon''' 
???

'''Gastón Villa''' 
???

'''''cholo'' balls''' 
???

'''''charro''''' 
cowboy (Mexican Spanish). cf. vaquero

'''Galandronome''' 
A type of bassoon developed by French instrument maker Galander in the mid-19th century.

'''Battle of Puebla''' 
Mexican victory over French forces, May 5, 1862, commemorated in Latino communities as ''cinco de mayo.''

==Page 316==

'''Ophir road''' 
Presumably the road to the town of Ophir, South of Telluride. Ophir is the biblical souce of the treasure of Solomon's Fleet [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11259b.htm].

'''wraith''' 
(Was she nearby at this moment?)

==Page 317==

'''backward departure''' 
No way to turn engine?

'''''abrazos''''' 
Spanish for "embrace"; "hugs".

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

ATD 296-317

2007-01-08T05:06:42Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 315 */

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

==Page 296==

'''Rodgers Brothers''' 
???

'''Mescalero''' 
???

'''Timken springs''' 
Henry Timken was a carriage maker who held three patents for carriage springs in the 1890’s. He founded his company, The Timken Roller Bearing Axle Company, in St. Louis in 1899. He also invented the tapered roller bearings which bear his name and were used in the hubs of carriages and automobiles. The company still exists and Timken roller bearing are used today in a number if diverse industries including spacecraft. Oddly enough (maybe not so odd considering Pynchon), the modern day Timken company created for the Bosch Group (See the note above for “Hieronymous wheel” on page 292) a process to produce a high alloy steel that could easily be machined to make trucks parts.

'''Basin''' 
???

==Page 297==

'''Pandora works''' 
Mine and works between Tomboy and Telluride. See the [http://www.telluride.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=standard&categoryId=7&categoryType=2&subcategoryId=0 Telluride Places of Interest]

'''adits''' 
Underground mine with a horizontal entrance. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adit Wikipedia]

'''tommyknockers''' 
Mythical mine dwellers, originally part of European legend, introduced to America by European miners. The name "tommyknockers" comes from Cornish mining lore. According to legend the tommyknockers are underground spirits who guard the earth's ores, especially gold and silver. Tommyknockers were known for mischief, pranks, jokes, and being highly spirited. "Knockers" comes from knocking sounds heard in mines that were attributed to their antics. They are tiny characters who dress like little miners and perform many mining duties while underground working alongside miners. [http://www.blm.gov/heritage/HE_Kids/tommy_knock.htm BLM Website]

==Page 298==

'''''duendes''''' 
Spanish for goblins, trolls or leprechauns, http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duende.

==Page 299==

'''matte-surface''' 
Not shiny.

'''"...Sunday-morning voice..."''' 
sermonizing, righteous preacher-like voice?

To me, the context suggests whispering - as in church.

==Page 300==
'''"somthin tattooed on my head"''' 
Cf. Queequeg's tattoos in ''Moby-Dick'', Ch. 3 and ''passim''.

'''fragment of time''' 
Sparks move faster than shutter.

'''collodion''' 
Toxic chemical used both in early photography and explosives manufacturing.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion Wikipedia]

==Page 301==

'''squareheads''' 
Scandinavians, especially Swedes, are sometimes referred to as ''squareheads''. In HBO's ''Deadwood'', for example, the orphaned girl Sophia (whose Scandinavian family migrated from Minnesota) is the ''squarehead girl''.

'''"just tie the reins . . . their way back"''' 
Cf. p. 294, "rented horses had already been skillfully unhitching themselves and proceding back to the corral."

==Page 302==
'''ghost bison''' 
The American Buffalo was nearly hunted to extinction in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_buffalo#19th_century_Buffalo_hunts Wikipedia]

'''Gallows Frame Saloon''' 
The Gallows Frame is the structural frame, usually made of steel or timber, at the top of an underground mine shaft. These frames hold the hoisting equipment which raise and lower equipment and miners into the underground mine.

'''fathom miners''' 
As in: a mine's depth is measured in fathoms (1 = 6 ft.). Any miner who goes deep down? And therefore could stand a drink.

'''remittance men''' 
Black sheep paid regularly by families to stay away.

==Page 303==

'''Circassian walnut''' 
A swirled hardwood popular in woodworking, in this case used euphemistically to refer to a bar. Named for a region in the northern Caucasus Mountains from which the tree originates.

'''Charlie Fong Ding''' 
Seems like a made-up comic Chinese name by TRP.

'''congress... congregation''' 
Two vs more-than-two at a time

'''California Peg 
The "''sous-maitresse''," or teacher's aid, at the Silver Orchid brothel.

'''Grundyesque''' 
Prudish; after Mrs. Grundy, a character in Thomas Morton's ''Speed the Plow'', (1798)([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Grundy]). See page 400 on "Mrs. Grundy"

'''Popcorn Alley''' 

'''a range of useful information'''. 
Range again, as spectrum.

'''hurdy girl''' 
A professional dancing girl.

==Page 304==

'''civil war and White Terror''' 
The Finnish Civil War lasted from January-May 1918 and was fought between the conservative White and revolutionary Red factions of the army. After the Whites emerged victorious, they rounded up Red elements in prison camps where many died, hence the White Terror. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War Wikipedia.]

'''"Love", whatever that turned out to be, would occupy a whole different piece of range.''' conveys a whole new meaning to the word 'range'?...not just land but something like 'range of emotions"?
'Piece of range' as in a spectrum? Light exists in a spectrum.
Cf. 'Light over the ranges' indeed.

==Page 305==

'''"The Shooting of Dan McGrew"''' 
1907 poem by Canadian poet Robert Service, so anachronistic here. [http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheSpelloftheYukon/chap13.html etext]

'''ruffled doves''' 
A/k/a "soiled doves," a Western term for prostitutes.

'''Stephen Emmens''' 
American chemist and mining engineer, inventor of the explosive Emmensite, who believed an intermediate substance he called "argentaurum" was transmutable into silver or gold; he claimed to have discovered a process by which the gold content of silver could be thus enriched. He carried out his experiments from 1895 to 1897, and saw them made public in 1899. The details of the process, as far as they are known, are as Pynchon describes them. Attempts to enlist emminent scientists to verify Emmens' apparent alchemy included an offer to Nicola Tesla (He refused). [http://www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/alchem.html website].

'''"argentaurum"''' 
Substance claimed by Dr. Stephen Emmens to be intermediate beteween silver and gold, and through which, as an intermediate step, each could be transmuted to the other [http://www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/alchem.html website].

'''nymph's mirror''' 
???

'''''Schieferspath''''' 
Has nothing to do with paths; ''spath'' is German for ''spar.'' ''Schiefer'' indicates it is a foliated mineral. So: foliated spar, i.e., a spar that cleaves readily into sheets. ''Schieferspath'' doesn't seem to be a standard mineralogical term in modern German; "some of the visiting labor" may come from a place where calcite is mined under this name.

'''superstitious Scotchman''' 
Holding the nine of diamonds, [[ATD_1-25#Page_24|"the curse of Scotland,"]] he doesn't bet his hand but loses the specimen.

==Page 306==

'''''grown brighter''''' 
???

'''gold... silver''' 
Any role of Iceland Spar and double-refracted light in the Emmens process of transmutationis Pynchon's invention.

'''rhomboid''' 
???
Why the question marks? Any reason why the fragment should not be a rhomboid?

'''Veta Madre''' 
The "Mother Lode" of Mexico [http://www.mindat.org/loc-7776.html] in Guanajuato

==Page 307==

'''Lyman Gage''' 
Banker, and Secretary of the Treasury under McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, 1897-1902. In 1900 he ensured passage of the Gold Standard Act, which repealed bimatalism and had tremendous effects on the mining industry, and the economy in general, leading eventually to the foundation of the Federal Reserve System to regulate the currency in the wake of the resulting instability [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_J._Gage]. Just incidentally, Gage had been President of the Board of Directors of the Columbian Exposition.

'''like a kettle coming to a boil''' 
???

'''stopes''' 
void created by extracting ore underground

'''Charles Bonnet Syndrome'''

Named after the Swiss philosopher and naturalist, Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), who first described a syndrome in which visually-impaired people see vivid, complex images that aren't real. CBS is thought to result from visual deprivation, and commonly occurs in sufferers of macular degeneration and other impairments of the eyes. Importantly, CBS does not (clinically, cannot) result from any type of psychosis or dementia. Thus, those who experience CBS are otherwise "normal" people.

Remarkably, CBS is characterized often by bizarre and grotesque images: ghosts, elves, sprites, cartoon-like figures, disembodies faces, magical landscapes. According to Cliff Pickover, author of ''Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves'' (Smart Publications, 2005), "people affflicted with certain eye diseases give similar reports of beings from parallel universes." [http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/PublicWebsite/public_rnib003641.hcsp Royal National Institute of the Blind] [http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/Pickover/pc/bonnet.html Dr. Cliff Pickover Comments] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bonnet Wikipedia Wikipedia entry on Bonnet] --[[User:Jmanmiami|Jmanmiami]] 09:10, 1 December 2006 (PST)

'''Puckpool''' 
???

==Page 308==

'''macular degeneration''' 
Degeneration of the macula, the part of the retina responsible for the sharp, central vision needed to read or drive. A leading cause of vision loss and blindness in people aged 65 and older.

==Page 309==

'''Old Gideon''' 
???

'''A.T. Still''' 
"Father of American Osteopathic Medicine" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Taylor_Still.]

==Page 310==

'''''Jefe''''' 
Chief (Spanish).

==Page 311==

'''mind-poisoning vetches''' 
???

'''Edgar Hadley''' 
???

'''Margaret Perril''' 
???

'''blood diverted from its return''' 
Accurate but odd?

'''Trout Lake''' 
???

==Page 313==

'''tridigital''' 
Three fingers (measure of liquor).

'''packer's knife''' 
???

==Page 314==

'''Dutch Waltz''' 
???

'''centrifugal''' 
Pulling away from center.

==Page 315==

'''Railbird Saloon''' 
???

'''Gastón Villa''' 
???

'''''cholo'' balls''' 
???

'''''charro''''' 
cowboy (Mexican Spanish). cf. vaquero

'''Galandronome''' 
A type of bassoon developed by French instrument maker Galander in the mid-19th century.

'''Battle of Puebla''' 
Mexican victory over French forces, May 5, 1862, commemorated in Latino communities as ''cinco de mayo.''

==Page 316==

'''Ophir road''' 
Presumably the road to the town of Ophir, South of Telluride. Ophir is the biblical souce of the treasure of Solomon's Fleet [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11259b.htm].

'''wraith''' 
(Was she nearby at this moment?)

==Page 317==

'''backward departure''' 
No way to turn engine?

'''''abrazos''''' 
???
Spanish for "embrace"; "hugs".

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

Talk:ATD 243-272

2007-01-01T17:13:49Z

Pschmid1:

Pages 249 and 250--with their layered references to maps, lenses, ana- and paramorphoscopes (including the Iceland Spar calcite lenses), reason, madness, and dreams--contain tropes for mapping ATD as rich as any that have appeared so far in the novel.

--[[User:Pschmid1|Pschmid1]] 09:12, 1 January 2007 (PST)

Talk:ATD 243-272

2007-01-01T17:12:55Z

Pschmid1:

Pages 249 and 250--with their layered references to maps, lenses, ana- and paramorphoscopes (including the Iceland Spar calcite "lenses), reason, madness, and dreams--contain tropes for mapping ATD as rich as any that have appeared so far in the novel.

--[[User:Pschmid1|Pschmid1]] 09:12, 1 January 2007 (PST)

ATD 243-272

2007-01-01T17:11:59Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 250 */ /*Page 252*/

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

==Page 244==

'''''ragazza''''' 
Italian 'girl'.

'''Picardy thirds''' 
Cf p50.

==Page 245==

'''twentyfold''' 
5 chums times 4 suspects each.

'''San Polo''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Polo Wikipedia]

==Page 246==

'''''giadrul''''' 
???

'''"with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in ''here''?"''' 
reminiscent of a similar line from the film ''Casablanca'', spoken by Humphrey Bogart: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

==Page 247==

'''Dum vivimus, bibamus''' 
While we live, let us drink. Corruption of "Dum vivimus, vivamus".

'''Napoleon's abolition''' 
1797. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia]

'''Polos' return''' 
1295. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Wikipedia]

==Page 248==

[[image:doge.jpg|thumb|100px|Doge by Giovanni Bellini|right]]'''Doge's hat''' 
For some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was styled the Doge, a rare but not unique Italian title derived from the Latin Dux, as the major Italian parallel Duce and the English Duke. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia entry]

==Page 249==

'''"Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all question of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools."''' 
Over time, Pynchon appears to have come to a belief in a massive conflict between cultures "valuing anaysis and differentiation" and those valuing "unity and integration". The two alternate maps of Asia could be a reference to these disparate worldviews.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. Wikipedia]

'''Clifford's term''' 
WK Clifford. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford Wikipedia]

==Page 250==

For a brief history of the compound-lens microscope, including a reference to the role played by Italians and the Dutch, including Griendl von Ach, see:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Microscope

==Page 252==

'''Mattoidi''' 
Borderland cases between sanity and insanity.

==Page 254==

'''"Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually."''' Possibly a reference to the fact that the Chums seem to live simultaneously in the "real" world of the novel and also in fictional stories within the novel.

==Page 255==

'''Bastille Day''' 
The Campanile di San Marco collapsed 14 July 1902. [http://europeforvisitors.com/venice/articles/campanile_di_san_marco.htm cite and pic]

==Page 256==

'''"four-brick groupings''' 

Padzhitnoff sees the Campanile come apart as a game of Tetris! The "four-brick groupings [...] begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes". (See [[ATD_119-148|page 123]] for more on Tetris.)

==Page 260==

'''Curly Dee''' 
???

'''Jew Fanny''' 
???

'''inside out''' 
Optical illusion.

'''Hsiang-Chao''' 
???

==Page 261==

'''lard smoke''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke," and p. 216, "Just greasy ashes by the trailside."

'''biscuit-shooter''' 
I.e., a cook.

'''gong''' 
???

==Page 262==

'''Willis Turnstone''' 
???

'''"Crazier."''' 
Cf Bonnie and Clyde.

==Page 263==

'''Oleander Prudge''' 
???

==Page 264==

'''single-jacker''' 
A miner who with a hammer and spike cuts a hole into rock for placement of a stick of dynamite. A set of holes are cut for each "synchronized" blast.
(Double jackers work as a team.)
Infer (this) one as a loner, a bit crazy, single minded, silent, easily hurt or misunderstood, doesn't play well with others...

==Page 265==

'''gullet of days''' 
???

==Page 266==

'''white-throated swift''' 
???

'''November''' 
???

'''nymph du pave''' 
should probably read "nymphE du pave": [http://dict.die.net/nymphe%20du%20pave/ street-whore]. Theoretically this could also translate as: (image of a) nymph on a mosaic (tesselated floor) - like the huge roman one of Ariadne in the Rue du Pavé in Avenche (Switzerland) [http://www.stub.unibe.ch/welten/texte/herzig.html german weblink]

'''geometric episode''' 
Vaguely reminiscent of Proust on Combray.

'''Engelmann spruce''' 
[http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=175 Picea engelmannii] A short biography of Dr. Engelmann (lit. Angel-Man) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Engelmann Wikipedia-Entry], more elaborated on [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Engelmann german site]

'''albatross cloth'''
Evidently a distinct color/design for a wedding or wedding party dress in the West at the time. I have no OED at the moment, but there are at least two online "diaries" or descriptions using the phrase. Here is one: "We were married August 6, 1896 at 7:30 AM at my folk’s residence among friends and relatives. To honor the event, my folks had our parlor decorated with many flowers including roses, myrtle and geraniums. I wore an elegant gown of white silk and albatross cloth."
==Page 267==

'''Jemt-land''' 
A Province in the center of Sweden [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland Wikipedia]

==Page 268==

'''side hobbles''' 
???

==Page 269==

'''items, nearly always stolen''' 
Cf bower-bird.

'''the dirt, the blood-red dirt''' 
This line recalls Homer's "wine-dark sea" first found in The Iliad (Bk VII) in a scene in which Achilles grieves for the death of Patroclus. Given the context here, it might be thought of as "mock-heroic."

'''marmot''' 
According to Merriam-Webster: a stout-bodied, short-legged rodent of the genus Marmota that has coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very short ears, lives in burrows, and hibernates in winter; also: a prairie dog or one of the larger ground squirrels. 

Marmots are native to Colorado and live at the higher altitudes. They are larger than squirrels, prairie dogs or ground squirrels (a/k/a chipmunks), about the size of a weasel but smaller than an otter

'''''"huevón"''''' 
From hueva (egg). According to [http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2004/06/huevon_and_guey.html this blog] huevon "literally refers to the size of a mans "cojones" (another pseudo decent word that has seen a lot of mainstream play). It is commonly used to indicate how lazy someone is. The bigger the "huevon" you are, the lazier. As with "guey", however, this too has often been used to say dude or buddy."

'''''"pinche cabrón"''''' 
???

==Page 271==

'''skip''' 
A wagon or basket on a track in a mine, or generally any scooter.

'''ex-Danite''' 
Danites were Joseph Smith's vigilantes, "Armies of Israel", during the Mormon War 1838 in Missouri, i.e., before travel to Utah.

'''"Avenging Angels"''' 
Brigham Young's group with similar purpose as Danite above, sometimes called Danites as well.

==Page 272==

'''the Delores''' 
Dolores River runs through Cortez (where Deuce seems to be, next to exploding cactus p270). "We woke up in the Dolores... [VALLEY/REGION/HOTEL]"

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

ATD 57-80

2006-12-03T15:45:34Z

Pschmid1: /* Pages 73-74 */

==Page 58==

'''Michelson-Morley experiment''' 
The Michelson–Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of physics, was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous aether. Primarily for this work, Albert Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment Wikipedia entry]

'''Particle or Wave? "...one finds in the devout aetherist a propensity of character evertoward the continuous as against the discrete"''' 
aether is the medium that light would move in, if it were a wave. This enters the question of whether light is a particle or a wave into the discussion. Pynchon sets up the dichotomy: (aether/wave/continuous vs. empty space/particle/discrete) (also, see page 61)

'''[[T%C3%B6pler_influence_machine|Töpler influence machine]]''' 
A machine for producing electrical charges.

==Page 59==

'''Ohio''' 
Harks back to M&D's visit with George Washington.

'''Northern Ohio Insane Asylum''' 
Full of light enthusiastes who invented light-powered bicycles (see p 76,) believe light to have consciousness and personality, and who eat light.

"Originally known as the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, this was the second of 6 public asylums established in Ohio in the 1850's. In later years it was commonly known as Newburgh State Hospital because it was located in Newburgh Township as recompense for Cleveland having been awarded the location of Cuyahoga County Seat. The main building, containing 100 beds,was completed in 1855 on land in Newburgh donated by the Garfield family." [http://www.rootsweb.com/~asylums/cleveland_oh/index.html [1]]

==Page 60==

'''Aether reports''' 
Associations of light with "wind."

'''Roswell Bounce''' 
The mentions of cosmic space, balloons, a US Bureau "in charge of reporting," and his occupation as a photograper seem to allude to the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, an alleged alien crash that the US government insisted was a downed weather balloon. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident Wikipedia entry]

==Page 61==

'''"Somehow Merle got the idea in his head that the MIchelson-Morley experiment and the Blinky Morgan manhunt were connected."''' 
Vaguely recalls the use of John Dillinger in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (741), insofar as they both read a surprising amount of metaphysical meaning into the death or final apprehension of a notorious criminal.
It also ties the criminal underground (out of the light) with the properties of light.

'''"Blinky" a "walking interferometer"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry#Interferometer Wikipedia entry on Interferometers]

'''fighting in the Rebellion''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

==Page 62==

Blinky "emerges from invisibility" thus dooming the existance of aether. Aether is then "Against the Day" undetectable, unknowable, invisable.

==Page 63==

'''O.D. Chandrasekhar''' 
Perhaps a nod to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), an Indian-American physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician, known to the world as Chandra, who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He calculated and discovered the Chandrasekhar Limit which is the maximum mass possible for a white dwarf star (one of the end stages of stars that have exhausted their fuel) supported by electron degeneracy pressure, and is approximately 3 × 1030 kg, around 1.44 times the mass of the Sun.

==Page 64==

'''Photography''' 
Light tied to silver and chemestry.

==Page 67==

'''Beast Without Shame''' 
Inexplicably recalls the epithet earlier used to denounce Lew Basnight on [[ATD_26-56#Page_36|page 36]]: "the Upstate-Downstate Beast."

'''Merle and Dally''' 
Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 68==

'''"...have you ever felt that you wished to suddenly disappear...?''' 
While Merle is getting obsessed with revealing images from darkrooms and chemicals, Zombini comes and makes Erly "disappear."

==Page 69==

'''"some larger plan"''' 
May be talking about writing ''Against the Day'' itself.

==Page 70==

''''seng''' 
Ginseng. ''Panax sp.'' 
The [http://www.wfbf.com/media_center/photo_gallery/ginseng%20closeup.jpg "red berries"] Merle refers to. 
[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/essay1c.html American Ginseng and the Idea of the Commons] at the LOC.

==Pages 73-74==

'''Skip''' 
Obviously recalls Byron the sentient lightbulb from ''Gravity's Rainbow''.
Also recalls Insane Asylum where he is told light has "consciousness and personality."
But Merle's "hitch as a lightning-rod salesman" also may be read as Pynchon's
tip-of-the-hat (or the copper rod) to a certain nineteenth-century American
predecessor, the author of a story called "The Lightning Rod Man" (1854).
Come to think of it, Pynchon may be the one contemporary author able to match
Melville in whimsy, satire, melancholia, encryption, Jehovah-like ambition, and periodic
sentences that are light on their feet yet labyrinthine. Cf. M&D's link to Melville's
''Israel Potter'' (now, sadly, unread), or GR's line trailing back toward that book about a whale.... Cf. ATD, p. 123.
This 'Skip' episode is not to be skipped or skimmed; it sets ATD's readers briefly aglow with sweetness and light--and sadness.

==Page 76==

'''Electric Generator hooked to an old bicycle''' 
Don't know if this is that important, but similar to Insane Asylum light-bicycle.

==Page 77==

'''Webb Traverse''' 
The character is introduced mere paragraphs after the description of spiderwebs "that when the early daylight was right cause you to stand there just stupefied." As "traverse" means to travel across or through, perhaps the character's name signifies his ability to navigate the complicated webs off.. I dunno, society, the establishment or something?

'''Webb and Merle''' 
Photography as alchemy. Mercury and the Philosopher's stone
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_fulminate Wikipedia entry on Silver Fulminate]

==Page 78==

'''The Anti-Stone''' 
not clear what it does: turns gold into lead, i.e. explosives/weapons?

==Page 80==

'''gravity''' 
Ties into the central scientific metaphor of GR, that the laws of physics and fate are somehow connected.

ATD 119-148

2006-12-03T15:43:18Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 126 */

==Page 122==

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships. Link: [http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html] 

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. 

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo.

==Page 123==

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted.

'''Ice Pirates''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in the 1980s. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

==Page 126==
'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's (cf. p. 73).

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
Etienne-Louis Malus (July 23, 1775 – February 24, 1812) was a French officer, engineer, physicist, and mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia Entry] Malus is best known for his law describing intensity of light as it passes through polarized materials. There are delicious metaphorical implications for any reader of a Pynchon novel.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingsaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry]

==Page 134==
'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials. "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

==Page 140==

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
As in the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in The Crying of Lot 49.

'''Bréguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulson's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulson. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulson's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress.

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports. A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world.

ATD 97-118

2006-12-02T06:39:56Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 117 */

==Page 99==
'''So is altitude transformed, continuously, to light''' 
The potential energy of water at an altitude is realized when it falls, producing the flow of electricity required for the production of artificial light. 

'''Hamilton had experienced at Brougham Bridge''' 
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865)was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of quaternions is perhaps his best known investigation. 

The discovery of quaternions reportedly occurred during a walk with his wife by the Royal Canal in Dublin. Upon having the inspiration for the formula, he promptly carved it into the bricks on the side of the canal. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

==Page 100==
'''substitute conscriptee''' 
The Enrollment Act of 1863 allowed draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who would serve for them. (See [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenese/purchase.jpg here] for an example substitution form.) J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, James Mellon and future president Grover Cleveland all hired substitutes. Within a year the price had gone up to $1,100, however. [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/civil-war-draft-records.html Civil War Draft Records: Exemptions and Enrollments]

==Page 109==

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: 

"where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. " (''Anne of Green Gables'', Chapt. 15, by Lucy Maud Montgomery) 

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond."'' A Story that is Untrue'' by Ambrose Bierce 

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst, which made use of a heated ceramic rod to produce light in ambient air (in contrast to Edison's incandescent, which required a vacuum to operate). '''Hermann Nernst''' was also responsible for first formulating the Third Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Nernst Heat Theorem. [http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/nernst.htm "Nernst Heat Theorem (Third Law of Thermodynamics) was presented by Walther Nernst on December 23, 1905 at a meeting of the Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen."]

'''Dr. Mikimoto (Kokichi)''' Produced the first cultured pearl in 1893 in Toba, Japan. As he left school at 13 to help support his family, any Doctorate he may have obtained must have been honorary.

'''Iceland Spar''' 
See this handy "About Geology" page [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm], with an illustration demonstrating a spar's double-refraction effect on printed letters--remarkably like that on the cover of ATD! This kind of calcite has rhombohedral cleavage, because each of its faces is a rhombus, a warped rectangle in which none of the corners are square. A "spar" would be not the whole calcite crystal, but a cleavage fragment. Is each of the rectangular pages of ATD then a warped cleavage from some sort of crystalline whole, refracting its text in several directions at once? Of course, to the Chums the text message they receive from Upper Hierarchy has but one simple meaning. "Paramorphism" = the structural alteration of a mineral without any change in its chemical composition.

'''Etienne-Louis Malus''' 
1775-1812, a French officer and mathematician whose work was predominantly concerned with light. He studied ray systems, and his theory on polarisation was published in 1809. His theory of the double refraction of light in crystals was published in 1810. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia] Malus is also the genus of the apple.

==Page 115==
'''Kepler'''

'''(Edmond) Halley'''
 1656-1742, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley Halley] was an English physical scientist most remembered for the comet he which he predicted would return. In 1692 he proposed that the earth was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth hollow]. In 1698 he departed on a two year voyage as captain of the HMS Paramore in order to measure variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In 1716 he suggested timing the transit of Venus to determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

'''(Leonhard) Euler'''

==Page 117==
'''royal court of Chthonica''' 
The adjective ''chthonic'' means "of the earth" or "of the underworld" and is often used to refer to the gods and other entities residing under the surface of the earth. The adjective is used creatively, and most famously, in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft ... a chief deity of his ficitional universe being Cthulhu.

'''Tunbridge Wells''' 
[http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"] is an archetypal figure of conservative England whose correspondence can be found frequently in newspapers railing at the latest outrages of modernity. Tunbridge Wells briefly features in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo''' 
Once again, the unseen narrator appears. By inference, the narrator is also the author of the various ''Chums of Chance...'' books referenced in ATD. This episode's also a little ''inter-textual'' scherzo: Poe (''Arthur Gordon Pym''), Jules Verne, ''Star Trek'' ... and Jeremiah Dixon's own underground journey in M&D. Doesn't Chick Counterfly sound rather Spockian here (cf. 115, bottom)?

ATD 97-118

2006-12-02T06:38:33Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 117 */

==Page 99==
'''So is altitude transformed, continuously, to light''' 
The potential energy of water at an altitude is realized when it falls, producing the flow of electricity required for the production of artificial light. 

'''Hamilton had experienced at Brougham Bridge''' 
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865)was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of quaternions is perhaps his best known investigation. 

The discovery of quaternions reportedly occurred during a walk with his wife by the Royal Canal in Dublin. Upon having the inspiration for the formula, he promptly carved it into the bricks on the side of the canal. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

==Page 100==
'''substitute conscriptee''' 
The Enrollment Act of 1863 allowed draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who would serve for them. (See [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenese/purchase.jpg here] for an example substitution form.) J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, James Mellon and future president Grover Cleveland all hired substitutes. Within a year the price had gone up to $1,100, however. [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/civil-war-draft-records.html Civil War Draft Records: Exemptions and Enrollments]

==Page 109==

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: 

"where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. " (''Anne of Green Gables'', Chapt. 15, by Lucy Maud Montgomery) 

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond."'' A Story that is Untrue'' by Ambrose Bierce 

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst, which made use of a heated ceramic rod to produce light in ambient air (in contrast to Edison's incandescent, which required a vacuum to operate). '''Hermann Nernst''' was also responsible for first formulating the Third Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Nernst Heat Theorem. [http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/nernst.htm "Nernst Heat Theorem (Third Law of Thermodynamics) was presented by Walther Nernst on December 23, 1905 at a meeting of the Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen."]

'''Dr. Mikimoto (Kokichi)''' Produced the first cultured pearl in 1893 in Toba, Japan. As he left school at 13 to help support his family, any Doctorate he may have obtained must have been honorary.

'''Iceland Spar''' 
See this handy "About Geology" page [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm], with an illustration demonstrating a spar's double-refraction effect on printed letters--remarkably like that on the cover of ATD! This kind of calcite has rhombohedral cleavage, because each of its faces is a rhombus, a warped rectangle in which none of the corners are square. A "spar" would be not the whole calcite crystal, but a cleavage fragment. Is each of the rectangular pages of ATD then a warped cleavage from some sort of crystalline whole, refracting its text in several directions at once? Of course, to the Chums the text message they receive from Upper Hierarchy has but one simple meaning. "Paramorphism" = the structural alteration of a mineral without any change in its chemical composition.

'''Etienne-Louis Malus''' 
1775-1812, a French officer and mathematician whose work was predominantly concerned with light. He studied ray systems, and his theory on polarisation was published in 1809. His theory of the double refraction of light in crystals was published in 1810. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia] Malus is also the genus of the apple.

==Page 115==
'''Kepler'''

'''(Edmond) Halley'''
 1656-1742, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley Halley] was an English physical scientist most remembered for the comet he which he predicted would return. In 1692 he proposed that the earth was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth hollow]. In 1698 he departed on a two year voyage as captain of the HMS Paramore in order to measure variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In 1716 he suggested timing the transit of Venus to determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

'''(Leonhard) Euler'''

==Page 117==
'''royal court of Chthonica''' 
The adjective ''chthonic'' means "of the earth" or "of the underworld" and is often used to refer to the gods and other entities residing under the surface of the earth. The adjective is used creatively, and most famously, in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft ... a chief deity of his ficitional universe being Cthulhu.

'''Tunbridge Wells''' 
[http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"] is an archetypal figure of conservative England whose correspondence can be found frequently in newspapers railing at the latest outrages of modernity. Tunbridge Wells briefly features in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo''' 
Once again, the unseen narrator appears. By inference, the narrator is also the author of the various Chums of Chance... books referenced in ATD. This episode's also a little ''inter-textual'' scherzo: Poe (''Arthur Gordon Pym''), Jules Verne, ''Star Trek'' ... and Jeremiah Dixon's own underground journey in M&D. Doesn't Chick Counterfly sound rather Spock-like here (cf. 115, bottom)?

ATD 97-118

2006-12-02T06:31:16Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 117 */

==Page 99==
'''So is altitude transformed, continuously, to light''' 
The potential energy of water at an altitude is realized when it falls, producing the flow of electricity required for the production of artificial light. 

'''Hamilton had experienced at Brougham Bridge''' 
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865)was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of quaternions is perhaps his best known investigation. 

The discovery of quaternions reportedly occurred during a walk with his wife by the Royal Canal in Dublin. Upon having the inspiration for the formula, he promptly carved it into the bricks on the side of the canal. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

==Page 100==
'''substitute conscriptee''' 
The Enrollment Act of 1863 allowed draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who would serve for them. (See [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenese/purchase.jpg here] for an example substitution form.) J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, James Mellon and future president Grover Cleveland all hired substitutes. Within a year the price had gone up to $1,100, however. [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/civil-war-draft-records.html Civil War Draft Records: Exemptions and Enrollments]

==Page 109==

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: 

"where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. " (''Anne of Green Gables'', Chapt. 15, by Lucy Maud Montgomery) 

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond."'' A Story that is Untrue'' by Ambrose Bierce 

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst, which made use of a heated ceramic rod to produce light in ambient air (in contrast to Edison's incandescent, which required a vacuum to operate). '''Hermann Nernst''' was also responsible for first formulating the Third Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Nernst Heat Theorem. [http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/nernst.htm "Nernst Heat Theorem (Third Law of Thermodynamics) was presented by Walther Nernst on December 23, 1905 at a meeting of the Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen."]

'''Dr. Mikimoto (Kokichi)''' Produced the first cultured pearl in 1893 in Toba, Japan. As he left school at 13 to help support his family, any Doctorate he may have obtained must have been honorary.

'''Iceland Spar''' 
See this handy "About Geology" page [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm], with an illustration demonstrating a spar's double-refraction effect on printed letters--remarkably like that on the cover of ATD! This kind of calcite has rhombohedral cleavage, because each of its faces is a rhombus, a warped rectangle in which none of the corners are square. A "spar" would be not the whole calcite crystal, but a cleavage fragment. Is each of the rectangular pages of ATD then a warped cleavage from some sort of crystalline whole, refracting its text in several directions at once? Of course, to the Chums the text message they receive from Upper Hierarchy has but one simple meaning. "Paramorphism" = the structural alteration of a mineral without any change in its chemical composition.

'''Etienne-Louis Malus''' 
1775-1812, a French officer and mathematician whose work was predominantly concerned with light. He studied ray systems, and his theory on polarisation was published in 1809. His theory of the double refraction of light in crystals was published in 1810. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia] Malus is also the genus of the apple.

==Page 115==
'''Kepler'''

'''(Edmond) Halley'''
 1656-1742, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley Halley] was an English physical scientist most remembered for the comet he which he predicted would return. In 1692 he proposed that the earth was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth hollow]. In 1698 he departed on a two year voyage as captain of the HMS Paramore in order to measure variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In 1716 he suggested timing the transit of Venus to determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

'''(Leonhard) Euler'''

==Page 117==
'''royal court of Chthonica''' 
The adjective ''chthonic'' means "of the earth" or "of the underworld" and is often used to refer to the gods and other entities residing under the surface of the earth. The adjective is used creatively, and most famously, in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft ... a chief deity of his ficitional universe being Cthulhu.

'''Tunbridge Wells''' 
[http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"] is an archetypal figure of conservative England whose correspondence can be found frequently in newspapers railing at the latest outrages of modernity. Tunbridge Wells briefly features in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo''' 
Once again, the unseen narrator appears. By inference, the narrator is also the author of the various Chums of Chance... books referenced in ATD. This episode's also a little ''inter-textual'' scherzo: Poe (''Arthur Gordon Pym''), Jules Verne, ''Star Trek'' ... and Jeremiah Dixon's own underground journey in M&D.

ATD 97-118

2006-12-02T06:15:40Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 114 */

ATD 97-118

2006-12-02T06:10:52Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 114 */

==Page 99==
'''So is altitude transformed, continuously, to light''' 
The potential energy of water at an altitude is realized when it falls, producing the flow of electricity required for the production of artificial light. 

'''Hamilton had experienced at Brougham Bridge''' 
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865)was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of quaternions is perhaps his best known investigation. 

The discovery of quaternions reportedly occurred during a walk with his wife by the Royal Canal in Dublin. Upon having the inspiration for the formula, he promptly carved it into the bricks on the side of the canal. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

==Page 100==
'''substitute conscriptee''' 
The Enrollment Act of 1863 allowed draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who would serve for them. (See [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenese/purchase.jpg here] for an example substitution form.) J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, James Mellon and future president Grover Cleveland all hired substitutes. Within a year the price had gone up to $1,100, however. [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/civil-war-draft-records.html Civil War Draft Records: Exemptions and Enrollments]

==Page 109==

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: 

"where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. " (''Anne of Green Gables'', Chapt. 15, by Lucy Maud Montgomery) 

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond."'' A Story that is Untrue'' by Ambrose Bierce 

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst, which made use of a heated ceramic rod to produce light in ambient air (in contrast to Edison's incandescent, which required a vacuum to operate). '''Hermann Nernst''' was also responsible for first formulating the Third Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Nernst Heat Theorem. [http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/nernst.htm "Nernst Heat Theorem (Third Law of Thermodynamics) was presented by Walther Nernst on December 23, 1905 at a meeting of the Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen."]

'''Dr. Mikimoto (Kokichi)''' Produced the first cultured pearl in 1893 in Toba, Japan. As he left school at 13 to help support his family, any Doctorate he may have obtained must have been honorary.

'''Iceland Spar''' 
See [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm], with an illustration demonstrating a spar's double-refraction effect on printed letters--remarkably like that on the cover of ATD! This kind of calcite has rhombohedral cleavage, because each of its faces is a rhombus, a warped rectangle in which none of the corners are square. A "spar" would be not the whole calcite crystal, but a cleavage fragment. Is each of the rectangular pages of ATD then a warped cleavage from some sort of crystalline whole, refracting its text in several directions at once? Of course, to the Chums the text message they receive from Upper Hierarchy has but one simple meaning.

'''Etienne-Louis Malus''' 
1775-1812, a French officer and mathematician whose work was predominantly concerned with light. He studied ray systems, and his theory on polarisation was published in 1809. His theory of the double refraction of light in crystals was published in 1810. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia] Malus is also the genus of the apple.

==Page 115==
'''Kepler'''

'''(Edmond) Halley'''
 1656-1742, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley Halley] was an English physical scientist most remembered for the comet he which he predicted would return. In 1692 he proposed that the earth was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth hollow]. In 1698 he departed on a two year voyage as captain of the HMS Paramore in order to measure variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In 1716 he suggested timing the transit of Venus to determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

'''(Leonhard) Euler'''

==Page 117==
'''royal court of Chthonica''' 
The adjective ''chthonic'' means "of the earth" or "of the underworld" and is often used to refer to the gods and other entities residing under the surface of the earth. The adjective is used creatively, and most famously, in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft ... a chief deity of his ficitional universe being Cthulhu.

'''Tunbridge Wells''' 
[http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"] is an archetypal figure of conservative England whose correspondence can be found frequently in newspapers railing at the latest outrages of modernity. Tunbridge Wells briefly features in Gravity's Rainbow.

'''my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo''' 
Once again, the unseen narrator appears. By inference, the narrator is also the author of the various Chums of Chance... books referenced in ATD.

ATD 57-80

2006-12-02T05:04:40Z

Pschmid1: /* Pages 73-74 */

==Page 58==

'''Michelson-Morley experiment''' 
The Michelson–Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of physics, was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous aether. Primarily for this work, Albert Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment Wikipedia entry]

'''Particle or Wave? "...one finds in the devout aetherist a propensity of character evertoward the continuous as against the discrete"''' 
aether is the medium that light would move in, if it were a wave. This enters the question of whether light is a particle or a wave into the discussion. Pynchon sets up the dichotomy: (aether/wave/continuous vs. empty space/particle/discrete) (also, see page 61)

'''[[T%C3%B6pler_influence_machine|Töpler influence machine]]''' 
A machine for producing electrical charges.

==Page 59==

'''Ohio''' 
Harks back to M&D's visit with George Washington.

'''Northern Ohio Insane Asylum''' 
Full of light enthusiastes who invented light-powered bicycles (see p 76,) believe light to have consciousness and personality, and who eat light.

"Originally known as the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, this was the second of 6 public asylums established in Ohio in the 1850's. In later years it was commonly known as Newburgh State Hospital because it was located in Newburgh Township as recompense for Cleveland having been awarded the location of Cuyahoga County Seat. The main building, containing 100 beds,was completed in 1855 on land in Newburgh donated by the Garfield family." [http://www.rootsweb.com/~asylums/cleveland_oh/index.html [1]]

==Page 60==

'''Aether reports''' 
Associations of light with "wind."

'''Roswell Bounce''' 
The mentions of cosmic space, balloons, a US Bureau "in charge of reporting," and his occupation as a photograper seem to allude to the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, an alleged alien crash that the US government insisted was a downed weather balloon. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident Wikipedia entry]

==Page 61==

'''"Somehow Merle got the idea in his head that the MIchelson-Morley experiment and the Blinky Morgan manhunt were connected."''' 
Vaguely recalls the use of John Dillinger in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (741), insofar as they both read a surprising amount of metaphysical meaning into the death or final apprehension of a notorious criminal.
It also ties the criminal underground (out of the light) with the properties of light.

'''"Blinky" a "walking interferometer"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry#Interferometer Wikipedia entry on Interferometers]

'''fighting in the Rebellion''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

==Page 62==

Blinky "emerges from invisibility" thus dooming the existance of aether. Aether is then "Against the Day" undetectable, unknowable, invisable.

==Page 63==

'''O.D. Chandrasekhar''' 
Perhaps a nod to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), an Indian-American physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician, known to the world as Chandra, who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He calculated and discovered the Chandrasekhar Limit which is the maximum mass possible for a white dwarf star (one of the end stages of stars that have exhausted their fuel) supported by electron degeneracy pressure, and is approximately 3 × 1030 kg, around 1.44 times the mass of the Sun.

==Page 64==

'''Photography''' 
Light tied to silver and chemestry.

==Page 67==

'''Beast Without Shame''' 
Inexplicably recalls the epithet earlier used to denounce Lew Basnight on [[ATD_26-56#Page_36|page 36]]: "the Upstate-Downstate Beast."

'''Merle and Dally''' 
Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 68==

'''"...have you ever felt that you wished to suddenly disappear...?''' 
While Merle is getting obsessed with revealing images from darkrooms and chemicals, Zombini comes and makes Erly "disappear."

==Page 69==

'''"some larger plan"''' 
May be talking about writing ''Against the Day'' itself.

==Page 70==

''''seng''' 
Ginseng. ''Panax sp.'' 
The [http://www.wfbf.com/media_center/photo_gallery/ginseng%20closeup.jpg "red berries"] Merle refers to. 
[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/essay1c.html American Ginseng and the Idea of the Commons] at the LOC.

==Pages 73-74==

'''Skip''' 
Obviously recalls Byron the sentient lightbulb from ''Gravity's Rainbow''.
Also recalls Insane Asylum where he is told light has "consciousness and personality."
But Merle's "hitch as a lightning-rod salesman" also may be read as Pynchon's
tip-of-the-hat (or the copper rod) to a certain nineteenth-century American
predecessor, the author of a story called "The Lightning Rod Man" (1854).
Come to think of it, Pynchon may be the one contemporary author able to match
Melville in whimsy, satire, melancholia, encryption, Jehovah-like ambition, and periodic
sentences that are light on their feet yet labyrinthine. Cf. M&D's link to Melville's
''Israel Potter'' (now, sadly, unread), or GR's line trailing back toward that book about a whale....
This 'Skip' episode is not to be skipped; for the moment it sets ATD's readers aglow with sweetness and light--and sadness.

==Page 76==

'''Electric Generator hooked to an old bicycle''' 
Don't know if this is that important, but similar to Insane Asylum light-bicycle.

==Page 77==

'''Webb Traverse''' 
The character is introduced mere paragraphs after the description of spiderwebs "that when the early daylight was right cause you to stand there just stupefied." As "traverse" means to travel across or through, perhaps the character's name signifies his ability to navigate the complicated webs off.. I dunno, society, the establishment or something?

'''Webb and Merle''' 
Photography as alchemy. Mercury and the Philosopher's stone
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_fulminate Wikipedia entry on Silver Fulminate]

==Page 78==

'''The Anti-Stone''' 
not clear what it does: turns gold into lead, i.e. explosives/weapons?

==Page 80==

'''gravity''' 
Ties into the central scientific metaphor of GR, that the laws of physics and fate are somehow connected.

ATD 57-80

2006-12-02T04:59:20Z

Pschmid1: /* Pages 73-74 */

==Page 58==

'''Michelson-Morley experiment''' 
The Michelson–Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of physics, was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous aether. Primarily for this work, Albert Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment Wikipedia entry]

'''Particle or Wave? "...one finds in the devout aetherist a propensity of character evertoward the continuous as against the discrete"''' 
aether is the medium that light would move in, if it were a wave. This enters the question of whether light is a particle or a wave into the discussion. Pynchon sets up the dichotomy: (aether/wave/continuous vs. empty space/particle/discrete) (also, see page 61)

'''[[T%C3%B6pler_influence_machine|Töpler influence machine]]''' 
A machine for producing electrical charges.

==Page 59==

'''Ohio''' 
Harks back to M&D's visit with George Washington.

'''Northern Ohio Insane Asylum''' 
Full of light enthusiastes who invented light-powered bicycles (see p 76,) believe light to have consciousness and personality, and who eat light.

"Originally known as the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, this was the second of 6 public asylums established in Ohio in the 1850's. In later years it was commonly known as Newburgh State Hospital because it was located in Newburgh Township as recompense for Cleveland having been awarded the location of Cuyahoga County Seat. The main building, containing 100 beds,was completed in 1855 on land in Newburgh donated by the Garfield family." [http://www.rootsweb.com/~asylums/cleveland_oh/index.html [1]]

==Page 60==

'''Aether reports''' 
Associations of light with "wind."

'''Roswell Bounce''' 
The mentions of cosmic space, balloons, a US Bureau "in charge of reporting," and his occupation as a photograper seem to allude to the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, an alleged alien crash that the US government insisted was a downed weather balloon. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident Wikipedia entry]

==Page 61==

'''"Somehow Merle got the idea in his head that the MIchelson-Morley experiment and the Blinky Morgan manhunt were connected."''' 
Vaguely recalls the use of John Dillinger in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (741), insofar as they both read a surprising amount of metaphysical meaning into the death or final apprehension of a notorious criminal.
It also ties the criminal underground (out of the light) with the properties of light.

'''"Blinky" a "walking interferometer"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry#Interferometer Wikipedia entry on Interferometers]

'''fighting in the Rebellion''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

==Page 62==

Blinky "emerges from invisibility" thus dooming the existance of aether. Aether is then "Against the Day" undetectable, unknowable, invisable.

==Page 63==

'''O.D. Chandrasekhar''' 
Perhaps a nod to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), an Indian-American physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician, known to the world as Chandra, who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He calculated and discovered the Chandrasekhar Limit which is the maximum mass possible for a white dwarf star (one of the end stages of stars that have exhausted their fuel) supported by electron degeneracy pressure, and is approximately 3 × 1030 kg, around 1.44 times the mass of the Sun.

==Page 64==

'''Photography''' 
Light tied to silver and chemestry.

==Page 67==

'''Beast Without Shame''' 
Inexplicably recalls the epithet earlier used to denounce Lew Basnight on [[ATD_26-56#Page_36|page 36]]: "the Upstate-Downstate Beast."

'''Merle and Dally''' 
Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 68==

'''"...have you ever felt that you wished to suddenly disappear...?''' 
While Merle is getting obsessed with revealing images from darkrooms and chemicals, Zombini comes and makes Erly "disappear."

==Page 69==

'''"some larger plan"''' 
May be talking about writing ''Against the Day'' itself.

==Page 70==

''''seng''' 
Ginseng. ''Panax sp.'' 
The [http://www.wfbf.com/media_center/photo_gallery/ginseng%20closeup.jpg "red berries"] Merle refers to. 
[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/essay1c.html American Ginseng and the Idea of the Commons] at the LOC.

==Pages 73-74==

'''Skip''' 
Obviously recalls Byron the sentient lightbulb from ''Gravity's Rainbow''.
Also recalls Insane Asylum where he is told light has "consciousness and personality."
But Merle's "hitch as a lightning-rod salesman" also may be read as Pynchon's
tip-of-the-hat (or the copper rod) to a certain nineteenth-century American
predecessor, the author of a story called "The Lightning Rod Man" (1854).
Come to think of it, Pynchon may be the one contemporary author able to match
Melville in whimsy, satire, melancholy, Jehovah-like ambition, and periodic
sentences that are light on their feet yet labyrinthine. Cf. M&D's link to Melville's
''Israel Potter'' (now, sadly, unread), or GR's line trailing back toward that book about a whale....
This 'Skip' episode is not to be skipped; for the moment it sets ATD's readers aglow with sweetness and light.

==Page 76==

'''Electric Generator hooked to an old bicycle''' 
Don't know if this is that important, but similar to Insane Asylum light-bicycle.

==Page 77==

'''Webb Traverse''' 
The character is introduced mere paragraphs after the description of spiderwebs "that when the early daylight was right cause you to stand there just stupefied." As "traverse" means to travel across or through, perhaps the character's name signifies his ability to navigate the complicated webs off.. I dunno, society, the establishment or something?

'''Webb and Merle''' 
Photography as alchemy. Mercury and the Philosopher's stone
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_fulminate Wikipedia entry on Silver Fulminate]

==Page 78==

'''The Anti-Stone''' 
not clear what it does: turns gold into lead, i.e. explosives/weapons?

==Page 80==

'''gravity''' 
Ties into the central scientific metaphor of GR, that the laws of physics and fate are somehow connected.

ATD 57-80

2006-12-02T04:56:19Z

Pschmid1: /* Pages 73-74 */

==Page 58==

'''Michelson-Morley experiment''' 
The Michelson–Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of physics, was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous aether. Primarily for this work, Albert Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment Wikipedia entry]

'''Particle or Wave? "...one finds in the devout aetherist a propensity of character evertoward the continuous as against the discrete"''' 
aether is the medium that light would move in, if it were a wave. This enters the question of whether light is a particle or a wave into the discussion. Pynchon sets up the dichotomy: (aether/wave/continuous vs. empty space/particle/discrete) (also, see page 61)

'''[[T%C3%B6pler_influence_machine|Töpler influence machine]]''' 
A machine for producing electrical charges.

==Page 59==

'''Ohio''' 
Harks back to M&D's visit with George Washington.

'''Northern Ohio Insane Asylum''' 
Full of light enthusiastes who invented light-powered bicycles (see p 76,) believe light to have consciousness and personality, and who eat light.

"Originally known as the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, this was the second of 6 public asylums established in Ohio in the 1850's. In later years it was commonly known as Newburgh State Hospital because it was located in Newburgh Township as recompense for Cleveland having been awarded the location of Cuyahoga County Seat. The main building, containing 100 beds,was completed in 1855 on land in Newburgh donated by the Garfield family." [http://www.rootsweb.com/~asylums/cleveland_oh/index.html [1]]

==Page 60==

'''Aether reports''' 
Associations of light with "wind."

'''Roswell Bounce''' 
The mentions of cosmic space, balloons, a US Bureau "in charge of reporting," and his occupation as a photograper seem to allude to the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, an alleged alien crash that the US government insisted was a downed weather balloon. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident Wikipedia entry]

==Page 61==

'''"Somehow Merle got the idea in his head that the MIchelson-Morley experiment and the Blinky Morgan manhunt were connected."''' 
Vaguely recalls the use of John Dillinger in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (741), insofar as they both read a surprising amount of metaphysical meaning into the death or final apprehension of a notorious criminal.
It also ties the criminal underground (out of the light) with the properties of light.

'''"Blinky" a "walking interferometer"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry#Interferometer Wikipedia entry on Interferometers]

'''fighting in the Rebellion''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

==Page 62==

Blinky "emerges from invisibility" thus dooming the existance of aether. Aether is then "Against the Day" undetectable, unknowable, invisable.

==Page 63==

'''O.D. Chandrasekhar''' 
Perhaps a nod to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), an Indian-American physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician, known to the world as Chandra, who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He calculated and discovered the Chandrasekhar Limit which is the maximum mass possible for a white dwarf star (one of the end stages of stars that have exhausted their fuel) supported by electron degeneracy pressure, and is approximately 3 × 1030 kg, around 1.44 times the mass of the Sun.

==Page 64==

'''Photography''' 
Light tied to silver and chemestry.

==Page 67==

'''Beast Without Shame''' 
Inexplicably recalls the epithet earlier used to denounce Lew Basnight on [[ATD_26-56#Page_36|page 36]]: "the Upstate-Downstate Beast."

'''Merle and Dally''' 
Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 68==

'''"...have you ever felt that you wished to suddenly disappear...?''' 
While Merle is getting obsessed with revealing images from darkrooms and chemicals, Zombini comes and makes Erly "disappear."

==Page 69==

'''"some larger plan"''' 
May be talking about writing ''Against the Day'' itself.

==Page 70==

''''seng''' 
Ginseng. ''Panax sp.'' 
The [http://www.wfbf.com/media_center/photo_gallery/ginseng%20closeup.jpg "red berries"] Merle refers to. 
[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/essay1c.html American Ginseng and the Idea of the Commons] at the LOC.

==Pages 73-74==

'''Skip''' 
Obviously recalls Byron the sentient lightbulb from ''Gravity's Rainbow''.
Also recalls Insane Asylum where he is told light has "consciousness and personality."
But Merle's "hitch as a lightning-rod salesman" also may be read as Pynchon's
tip-of-the-hat (or the copper rod) to a certain nineteenth-century American
predecessor, the author of a story called "The Lightning Rod Man" (1854).
Come to think of it, Pynchon may be the one contemporary author able to match
Melville in whimsy, satire, melancholy, Jehovah-like ambition, and periodic
sentences that are light on their feet yet labyrinthine. Cf. M&D's link to Melville's
''Israel Potter'' (now, sadly, unread), or GR's line trailing back toward that book about a whale....
This 'Skip' episode, though, for the moment sets ATD's readers aglow with sweetness and light.

==Page 76==

'''Electric Generator hooked to an old bicycle''' 
Don't know if this is that important, but similar to Insane Asylum light-bicycle.

==Page 77==

'''Webb Traverse''' 
The character is introduced mere paragraphs after the description of spiderwebs "that when the early daylight was right cause you to stand there just stupefied." As "traverse" means to travel across or through, perhaps the character's name signifies his ability to navigate the complicated webs off.. I dunno, society, the establishment or something?

'''Webb and Merle''' 
Photography as alchemy. Mercury and the Philosopher's stone
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_fulminate Wikipedia entry on Silver Fulminate]

==Page 78==

'''The Anti-Stone''' 
not clear what it does: turns gold into lead, i.e. explosives/weapons?

==Page 80==

'''gravity''' 
Ties into the central scientific metaphor of GR, that the laws of physics and fate are somehow connected.

ATD 57-80

2006-12-02T04:53:55Z

Pschmid1: /* Pages 73-74 */

==Page 58==

'''Michelson-Morley experiment''' 
The Michelson–Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of physics, was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous aether. Primarily for this work, Albert Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment Wikipedia entry]

'''Particle or Wave? "...one finds in the devout aetherist a propensity of character evertoward the continuous as against the discrete"''' 
aether is the medium that light would move in, if it were a wave. This enters the question of whether light is a particle or a wave into the discussion. Pynchon sets up the dichotomy: (aether/wave/continuous vs. empty space/particle/discrete) (also, see page 61)

'''[[T%C3%B6pler_influence_machine|Töpler influence machine]]''' 
A machine for producing electrical charges.

==Page 59==

'''Ohio''' 
Harks back to M&D's visit with George Washington.

'''Northern Ohio Insane Asylum''' 
Full of light enthusiastes who invented light-powered bicycles (see p 76,) believe light to have consciousness and personality, and who eat light.

"Originally known as the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, this was the second of 6 public asylums established in Ohio in the 1850's. In later years it was commonly known as Newburgh State Hospital because it was located in Newburgh Township as recompense for Cleveland having been awarded the location of Cuyahoga County Seat. The main building, containing 100 beds,was completed in 1855 on land in Newburgh donated by the Garfield family." [http://www.rootsweb.com/~asylums/cleveland_oh/index.html [1]]

==Page 60==

'''Aether reports''' 
Associations of light with "wind."

'''Roswell Bounce''' 
The mentions of cosmic space, balloons, a US Bureau "in charge of reporting," and his occupation as a photograper seem to allude to the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, an alleged alien crash that the US government insisted was a downed weather balloon. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident Wikipedia entry]

==Page 61==

'''"Somehow Merle got the idea in his head that the MIchelson-Morley experiment and the Blinky Morgan manhunt were connected."''' 
Vaguely recalls the use of John Dillinger in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (741), insofar as they both read a surprising amount of metaphysical meaning into the death or final apprehension of a notorious criminal.
It also ties the criminal underground (out of the light) with the properties of light.

'''"Blinky" a "walking interferometer"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry#Interferometer Wikipedia entry on Interferometers]

'''fighting in the Rebellion''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

==Page 62==

Blinky "emerges from invisibility" thus dooming the existance of aether. Aether is then "Against the Day" undetectable, unknowable, invisable.

==Page 63==

'''O.D. Chandrasekhar''' 
Perhaps a nod to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), an Indian-American physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician, known to the world as Chandra, who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He calculated and discovered the Chandrasekhar Limit which is the maximum mass possible for a white dwarf star (one of the end stages of stars that have exhausted their fuel) supported by electron degeneracy pressure, and is approximately 3 × 1030 kg, around 1.44 times the mass of the Sun.

==Page 64==

'''Photography''' 
Light tied to silver and chemestry.

==Page 67==

'''Beast Without Shame''' 
Inexplicably recalls the epithet earlier used to denounce Lew Basnight on [[ATD_26-56#Page_36|page 36]]: "the Upstate-Downstate Beast."

'''Merle and Dally''' 
Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 68==

'''"...have you ever felt that you wished to suddenly disappear...?''' 
While Merle is getting obsessed with revealing images from darkrooms and chemicals, Zombini comes and makes Erly "disappear."

==Page 69==

'''"some larger plan"''' 
May be talking about writing ''Against the Day'' itself.

==Page 70==

''''seng''' 
Ginseng. ''Panax sp.'' 
The [http://www.wfbf.com/media_center/photo_gallery/ginseng%20closeup.jpg "red berries"] Merle refers to. 
[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/essay1c.html American Ginseng and the Idea of the Commons] at the LOC.

==Pages 73-74==

'''Skip''' 
Obviously recalls Byron the sentient lightbulb from ''Gravity's Rainbow''.
Also recalls Insane Asylum where he is told light has "consciousness and personality."
But Merle's "hitch as a lightning-rod salesman" also may be read as Pynchon's
tip-of-the-hat (or the copper rod) o a certain nineteenth-century American
predecessor, the author of a story called "The Lightning Rod Man" (1854).
Come to think of it, Pynchon may be the one contemporary author able to match
Melville in whimsy, satire, melancholy, Jehovah-like ambition, and periodic
sentences that are light on their feet yet labyrinthine. Cf. M&D's link to Melville's
''Israel Potter'' (now, sadly, unread), or GR's line trailing back toward that book about a whale....
This 'Skip' episode, though, for the moment sets ATD's readers aglow with sweetness and light.

==Page 76==

'''Electric Generator hooked to an old bicycle''' 
Don't know if this is that important, but similar to Insane Asylum light-bicycle.

==Page 77==

'''Webb Traverse''' 
The character is introduced mere paragraphs after the description of spiderwebs "that when the early daylight was right cause you to stand there just stupefied." As "traverse" means to travel across or through, perhaps the character's name signifies his ability to navigate the complicated webs off.. I dunno, society, the establishment or something?

'''Webb and Merle''' 
Photography as alchemy. Mercury and the Philosopher's stone
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_fulminate Wikipedia entry on Silver Fulminate]

==Page 78==

'''The Anti-Stone''' 
not clear what it does: turns gold into lead, i.e. explosives/weapons?

==Page 80==

'''gravity''' 
Ties into the central scientific metaphor of GR, that the laws of physics and fate are somehow connected.

ATD 57-80

2006-12-02T04:53:16Z

Pschmid1: /* Pages 73-74 */

==Page 58==

'''Michelson-Morley experiment''' 
The Michelson–Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of physics, was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous aether. Primarily for this work, Albert Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment Wikipedia entry]

'''Particle or Wave? "...one finds in the devout aetherist a propensity of character evertoward the continuous as against the discrete"''' 
aether is the medium that light would move in, if it were a wave. This enters the question of whether light is a particle or a wave into the discussion. Pynchon sets up the dichotomy: (aether/wave/continuous vs. empty space/particle/discrete) (also, see page 61)

'''[[T%C3%B6pler_influence_machine|Töpler influence machine]]''' 
A machine for producing electrical charges.

==Page 59==

'''Ohio''' 
Harks back to M&D's visit with George Washington.

'''Northern Ohio Insane Asylum''' 
Full of light enthusiastes who invented light-powered bicycles (see p 76,) believe light to have consciousness and personality, and who eat light.

"Originally known as the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, this was the second of 6 public asylums established in Ohio in the 1850's. In later years it was commonly known as Newburgh State Hospital because it was located in Newburgh Township as recompense for Cleveland having been awarded the location of Cuyahoga County Seat. The main building, containing 100 beds,was completed in 1855 on land in Newburgh donated by the Garfield family." [http://www.rootsweb.com/~asylums/cleveland_oh/index.html [1]]

==Page 60==

'''Aether reports''' 
Associations of light with "wind."

'''Roswell Bounce''' 
The mentions of cosmic space, balloons, a US Bureau "in charge of reporting," and his occupation as a photograper seem to allude to the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, an alleged alien crash that the US government insisted was a downed weather balloon. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident Wikipedia entry]

==Page 61==

'''"Somehow Merle got the idea in his head that the MIchelson-Morley experiment and the Blinky Morgan manhunt were connected."''' 
Vaguely recalls the use of John Dillinger in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (741), insofar as they both read a surprising amount of metaphysical meaning into the death or final apprehension of a notorious criminal.
It also ties the criminal underground (out of the light) with the properties of light.

'''"Blinky" a "walking interferometer"''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry#Interferometer Wikipedia entry on Interferometers]

'''fighting in the Rebellion''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

==Page 62==

Blinky "emerges from invisibility" thus dooming the existance of aether. Aether is then "Against the Day" undetectable, unknowable, invisable.

==Page 63==

'''O.D. Chandrasekhar''' 
Perhaps a nod to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), an Indian-American physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician, known to the world as Chandra, who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He calculated and discovered the Chandrasekhar Limit which is the maximum mass possible for a white dwarf star (one of the end stages of stars that have exhausted their fuel) supported by electron degeneracy pressure, and is approximately 3 × 1030 kg, around 1.44 times the mass of the Sun.

==Page 64==

'''Photography''' 
Light tied to silver and chemestry.

==Page 67==

'''Beast Without Shame''' 
Inexplicably recalls the epithet earlier used to denounce Lew Basnight on [[ATD_26-56#Page_36|page 36]]: "the Upstate-Downstate Beast."

'''Merle and Dally''' 
Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 68==

'''"...have you ever felt that you wished to suddenly disappear...?''' 
While Merle is getting obsessed with revealing images from darkrooms and chemicals, Zombini comes and makes Erly "disappear."

==Page 69==

'''"some larger plan"''' 
May be talking about writing ''Against the Day'' itself.

==Page 70==

''''seng''' 
Ginseng. ''Panax sp.'' 
The [http://www.wfbf.com/media_center/photo_gallery/ginseng%20closeup.jpg "red berries"] Merle refers to. 
[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/essay1c.html American Ginseng and the Idea of the Commons] at the LOC.

==Pages 73-74==

'''Skip''' 
Obviously recalls Byron the sentient lightbulb from ''Gravity's Rainbow''.
Also recalls Insane Asylum where he is told light has "consciousness and personality."
But Merle' "hitch as a lightning-rod salesman" also may be read as Pynchon's
tip-of-the-hat (or the copper rod) o a certain nineteenth-century American
predecessor, the author of a story called "The Lightning Rod Man" (1854).
Come to think of it, Pynchon may be the one contemporary author able to match
Melville in whimsy, satire, melancholy, Jehovah-like ambition, and periodic
sentences that are light on their feet yet labyrinthine. Cf. M&D's link to Melville's
''Israel Potter'' (now, sadly, unread), or GR's line trailing back toward that book about a whale....
This 'Skip' episode, though, for the moment sets ATD's readers aglow with sweetness and light.

==Page 76==

'''Electric Generator hooked to an old bicycle''' 
Don't know if this is that important, but similar to Insane Asylum light-bicycle.

==Page 77==

'''Webb Traverse''' 
The character is introduced mere paragraphs after the description of spiderwebs "that when the early daylight was right cause you to stand there just stupefied." As "traverse" means to travel across or through, perhaps the character's name signifies his ability to navigate the complicated webs off.. I dunno, society, the establishment or something?

'''Webb and Merle''' 
Photography as alchemy. Mercury and the Philosopher's stone
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_fulminate Wikipedia entry on Silver Fulminate]

==Page 78==

'''The Anti-Stone''' 
not clear what it does: turns gold into lead, i.e. explosives/weapons?

==Page 80==

'''gravity''' 
Ties into the central scientific metaphor of GR, that the laws of physics and fate are somehow connected.

Talk:ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T03:59:37Z

Pschmid1:

11-30-06. Have added the tilda (˜) over the n in Richard Fariña's name in the dedication comment. That tilda makes the ñ a completely different letter and pronunciation than the 'n.' It's important to get all the diacritical marks right for Pynchon's sake (he obsesses over these, like he did over things like the shape of the ampersand on the Mason & Dixon cover)--and also because Fariña's name is Spanish, not the English word for a kind of finely ground breakfast cereal. --[[User:Pschmid1|Pschmid1]] 19:59, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Talk:ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T03:33:14Z

Pschmid1:

ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T03:26:19Z

Pschmid1:

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 7==
'''"'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated...."''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." Great verb!

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.

ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T02:14:26Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 3 */

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 7==
'''"'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated...."''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." Great verb!

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.

ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T02:13:03Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 7 */

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomley...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 7==
'''"'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated...."''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." Great verb!

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.

ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T02:12:13Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 7 */

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomley...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 7==
'''"'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated...."''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, meaning "to go off and squat somewhere else." Great verb!

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.

ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T02:10:37Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 7 */

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomley...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 7==
''"'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated...."'' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, meaning "to go off and squat somewhere else." Great verb!

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.

ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T02:07:10Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 8 */

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomley...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 7==
"'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated...." 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, meaning "to go off and squat somewhere else." Great verb!

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.

Talk:ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T01:57:59Z

Pschmid1: Fariña correction

Please add the tilda (˜) over the n in Richard Fariña's name in the dedication comment. (There's no edit button for this.) It's important to get all the diacritical marks right, for Pynchon's sake (he obsesses over these) and also because Fariña's name is Spanish, not the English word for a kind of breakfast cereal. Thanx.

ATD 1-25

2006-12-01T01:50:07Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 3 */

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomley...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.

ATD 1-25

2006-11-30T22:20:10Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 3 */

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; COL49, 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomley...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.

ATD 1-25

2006-11-30T22:17:33Z

Pschmid1: /* Page 3 */

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

'''"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."''' 
Epigraph by Thelonious Monk. Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction).

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name." For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). "Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; COL49, 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but "Vineland"?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomley...very well!!"''' 
Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly now' appears on page 54 of ''Mason & Dixon'' ("Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...").

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

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].

==Page 5==

'''Pugnax''' 
The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight." Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog "Scooby-Doo."

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit)..."'' 
This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.

May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored Amazon.com book description which included “With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.”

==Page 6==

'''"...anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions.

==Page 8==

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.

==Page 9==

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established.

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Anyone understand this statement by Randolph?? This simply seems to use the notion that most maps put north at the top, so moving north is moving 'up' the page. Once you pass the pole, you are going south, or back 'down' the map.

:This may be an allusion to the change in climate from warm southern climates to cold northern climates. The contrast from southern california to northern california is apt, sunny beaches south...rainy foggy beaches north. Population thins out similar to the oxygen the further North you get. Alaska being the ideal extreme. One can see this as another of the many echoes to themes from "Gravity's Rainbow" in the "Light Over the Ranges" section. Ascending (in an airship or rocket) is like moving Northward to colder and less habitable environments, until one crosses the Pole (literally going 'Beyond the Zero.')

:Also, it may further drive home the point, to Chick, that up does not lead to "any realm of the counterfactual": the comparison with going north should remind him that up is just another direction, strange and uncomfortable as it may be for him.

:Are we reading too deeply into this statement? Perhaps it only means that the air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore is like travelling northward.

::Importantly, going up (in altitude) is an '''expedited''' means of going to a place that is “like” the North (in latitude). For example, say you are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on a summer day in Colorado. While the snowline on the mountains may only be a few miles ''up'', the snowline on land of the same or similar elevation to the land you stand on is likely a 1000+ miles ''north''. The sudden increase in altitude accompanying a flight aboard the Inconvenience does not allow one to acclimatize gradually to the northern feel -- thus Chick’s need for a “transitional” “foul-weather cloak”. Interestingly, in terms of gravity, going up is like going ''south'': [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=465 gravity is relatively stronger at points of low altitude and high latitude].

:::I think the more interesting part is the comment that there is a secret that we must not talk about where going further upwards creates an experience much like gover OVER the pole- i.e. warmer and marmer. This is the real question.

==Page 12==

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

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

==Page 13==
'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]

Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and "The Unsleeping Eye", an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.

==Page 14==

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

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

==Page 15==

'''ukelele''' 
Ukeleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukelele in college.

==Page 17==

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, ''P. methysticum,'' widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary]

Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''Tzigane''' 
Meaning "gypsy".

==Page 24==

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded around 1899.

==Page 25==

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

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.