Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

ATD 489-524

2007-05-02T13:26:30Z

Pynch: /* Page 519 */

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

==Page 489==

'''Neville . . . Nigel''' 
Lew's rescuers after the attempt to blow him up in Colorado, page 185.

'''stage left or audience left?''' 
A theater has two directions called left. "Stage left" is to the left of the performers as they face the audience. "House left" or "audience left" is to the left of an audience member facing the stage.

'''desolate sighs''' 
(They're not gay?)

'''embryo Apostlet''' 
The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an elite intellectual secret society at Cambridge University, founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the Bishop of Gibraltar. Undergraduates being considered for membership are called "embryos" and are invited to "embryo parties," where members judge whether the student should be invited to join. "-let" is a common suffix that denotes smallness or youth, like droplet (small drop) or piglet or eyelet &c &c..., thus, a young Apostle. [[Cambridge Apostles|More on the Cambridge Apostles and the Cambridge spy ring...]]

'''Cyprian Latewood''' 
The name connects the character to the Greek demigod Orpheus. When Cyprian arrives, with Reef and Yashmeen, at the convent in the Balkans (Thrace) ([[ATD_946-975#Page 956|p. 956]]), he is greeted with "Welcome home." Thrace was the birthplace of Orpheus.

'''"Cyprian":''' 
:After Orpheus loses Eurydice forever by turning to see if she's still following him out of the underworld, he never loves another woman, turning instead to young boys. One of Greek god Apollo's beloved boys, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyparissus Cyparissus], loves a beautiful tame stag that he accidentally kills with a spear. In his grief, Apollo turns him into a cypress tree. The Cypress was one of the trees Orpheus charmed with song, according to [[Cyprian Latewood|Ovid in his ''Metamorphoses'']].

'''"Latewood":''' 
:The "late wood" is the outer portion of the growth ring on a tree, more dense than the "early wood" which appears early in the growing season, appearing later in the season, usually summer. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_ring Wikipedia entry]. The tree connection is strong. It was said that Orpheus could even charm the trees, and Rilke (who figures prominently in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']) in the first of his ''Sonnets to Orpheus'', begins:

::Tree arising! O pure ascendance!
::Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear!
::Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance:
::seeds of change and new beginnings near.

[[Cyprian Latewood|More about this connection...]]

'''sod''' 
Not simply the term for a disagreeable person but specifically a homosexual; short for ''sodomite.''

'''Eastern wog''' 
Cf p222.

'''The German Sea''' 
A public house; the name occurs again with a different meaning at the end of this chapter.

'''sub-Clerkenwell''' 
Clerkenwell is a neighborhood in London that has a reputation for producing the highest quality of watches, clocks and jewellery. A sub-Clerkenwell trinket would be a poorly made trinket

'''annoyance''' 
(Why?)
:the other's penis seemed larger than one's own?
::Annoyance not because of the penises but because they are rivals. Lethargic not because of the penises but because they aren't getting anywhere in their courtship. Finally, "each regarding the other's penis" because even straight men can't deny that that's one of the things they look at in the steamroom.

==Page 490==

'''gyps''' 
A gyp is a college servant, whose office is that of a gentleman's valet, waiting on two or more collegians in the University of Cambridge. He differs from a bed-maker, inasmuch as he does not make beds; but he runs on errands, waits at table, wakes men for morning chapel, brushes their clothes, and so on. His perquisites are innumerable, and he is called a "gyp" (Greek: vulture) because he preys upon his employer like a vulture. At Oxford they are called scouts. [http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/gyp.html]

[[image:ByronsPool.jpg|thumb|Byron's Pool|100px|right]]'''Byron's Pool''' 
A conservation area in Cambridge. The pool is named after the romantic poet Lord Byron, who is believed to have enjoyed swimming there. Byron studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, starting in 1805.

'''"Div!"''' 
Probably short for "divine!" Of course, if these kids were Vectorists they would be aware of the double ''entendre'' with the '''div''' (divergence) operator.

'''"Whizzo!"''' 
An early-twentieth century English slang expression of delight. Uttered earlier, by Neville or Nigel, on introducing Lew to the Tarot deck, page 186.

'''''"That'' is that of which ''I'' speak!"''' 
prob. homosexuality. cf. "I am the Love that dare not speak its name." -- Lord Alfred Douglas's poem 'Two Loves' in ''Chameleon'' ca. 1896.

Made more famous as an utterance by Oscar Wilde during his trial for sodomy. His response: '"The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare.[...]. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him."

: This seems wrong, given the typical Pynchon scene of males ogling/desiring women. There is no homosexuality invloved with these guys
but a "'range' [again] of remarks" and 'all-night rhapsodizing' over the beauty of naked women. This line "That, etc." seems more likely a comic spin on a famous line which we know Pynchon has alluded to before [V.]: Wittgenstein's "whereof I can not speak, thereof I must remain silent" from the Tractatus. He could NOT not speak of their nakedness.

This whole scene is reminiscent, perhaps, of the biblically famous Susannah and the Elders, where she, too, is watched appreciatively bathing. Wallace Stevens, among others, has a famous poem about it.

::All this about homosexuality is useful knowledge, but (a) the men here are motivated by lust directed at ''women'' and (b) this is among the "catchphrases of [a] day" when Oscar Wilde's love could not yet even speak its name. "''That'' is that of which ''I'' speak!" is a Pynchon trick, taking a 20th-21st century expression and paramorphically projecting it back in time. At the university it was upper-class and refined; today it has become a vulgarism, "That's what I'm talkin' about!" Other examples: "high susceptibility to primordial variables," page 801 (today "extreme sensitivity to initial conditions"); "as cheerful as a finch," page 21 ("as happy as a lark").

Exactly as in the last paragraph, a poke at the currently colloquial:
"That's what I'm talkin' about!"

'''Cloisters Court''' 
Cloisters Court, part of Girton College, Cambridge University.

'''King's''' 
King's College, Cambridge University.

'''Queen Anne's Gate''' 
Some part of the British Home Office is, or was, located in the London (Westminster) street named Queen Anne's Gate.
: According to Wikipedia the British Home Office resided there from 1978 to 2004, so this is unlikely. Since the 1860's until recently, however, parts of the British secret service had their offices at Queen Anne's Gate - the context suggests that the N's report to that.

'''inconvenience''' 
Not sure what connection Pynchon is making here, but the word inconvenience could not come up accidentally in this novel.

'''Newnham''' 
An all-women's college at Cambridge, founded in 1871.

'''Wrangleresses''' 
Made-up: top female Math Scholars at Cambridge. Top students were called Wranglers, all male at this time. "Cambridge University and within it of the Mathematics Tripos, the competitive graduation examination process that ranked candidates in order of “Wrangler”" ...

'''Phillippa Fawcett''' 
Typo, should be Philippa Fawcett (1868-1948). She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1890, she was the first woman to score the highest mark at Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge. She served as a College Lecturer in mathematics at Newnham College for 10 years. [http://www.agnesscott.edu/Lriddle/WOMEN/fawcett.htm]

'''Grace Chisholm and Will Young''' 
Grace Chisholm (1868-1944), an English mathematician. She went to Girton College, Cambridge in 1889 to study mathematics. Since no women were accepted to graduate schools in England, after graduation She went to the University of Göttingen to continue her mathematics education and received her PhD there in 1895. The following year she married William Young (1863-1942), one of her tutors at Girton and also a mathematician. (''romances with one's tutors à la . . .'') Grace Chisholm and Will Young formed a mathematical married partnetship of real significance. Husband and wife played a major role in set theory research. Between them they wrote 214 mathematical articles and several books, including one on geometry and one on set theory. [http://www.agnesscott.edu/LRIDDLE/WOMEN/young.htm Grace Chisholm] and [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Young.html William Young].

'''nautch-girl''' 
notch-girl? A woman who could 'notch' a lot of men?

An exotic dancer, more or less. This whole phrase "nautch-girl extravagance of looks and self-possession" refers to the sense of dominance the stripper feels over the yawps in the audience.

Nautch girl was an Indian traditional dancer in Hindu temple or court performing ritual and religious dances. Her costume generally was of bright color. Pynchon probably refered to Yahsmeen's beautiful but exotic, extraordinary look and poise.
[[http://www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk/india_art/starter/nautch_girls.htm nautch girl]].

'''socio-acrobatic aggrandizement''' 
'social climbing'

'''''opium beer''''' 
laudanum?, if not literally.

'''duc de Richelieu''' 
Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu (September 9, 1585 – December 4, 1642), was a French clergyman, noble, and statesman.

Consecrated as a bishop in 1607, he later entered politics, becoming a Secretary of State in 1616. Richelieu soon rose in both the Church and the state, becoming a cardinal in 1622, and King Louis XIII's chief minister in 1624. He remained in office until his death in 1642;
from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia].

:Wrong Richelieu. The duke in question won his big battle at Mahon in 1756. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Fran%C3%A7ois_Armand_du_Plessis%2C_duc_de_Richelieu Here's the Wikipedia link for the right one.]

'''Line and staff''' 
Cyprian's father sees his work in the City as analogous to the profession of arms. Officers in the British and most other armies of the time were classified as "line," those commanding troops, and "staff," those performing administrative and planning functions.

==Page 491==

'''the City''' 
Major banks and other big-money institutions are located in the City of London, a fairly small subset of Metropolitan London.

'''can't ''ever'' tell''' 
Dog-eat-dog capitalism?

'''Reginald "Ratty" McHugh''' 

'''"fifteen years later'''
Reginald nodded appreciatively FIFTEEN YEARS OR SO LATER?...What is going
on here time-wise? 
All the conversation before this line, between Cyprian and his father, is "recalled", having taken place some "fifteen years or so" earlier.

'''one more flag''' 
IE, his father's wallpaper brand.

'''Balkan Sobranies''' 
An upscale brand of cigarette.

'''lilies-and-lassitude humor of the '90s''' 
Cult of Oscar Wilde?
Aubrey Beardsley and the pre-Raphaelites?

'''table d'hôte''' 
French: host's table. In a restaurant, a meal chosen by the management, no substitutions please. If the appetizer is shrimp and you don't like shrimp, then don't eat the appetizer.

'''Very well, I contradict myself.''' 
Walt Whitman allusion. See Leaves of Grass. Next line in ADT affirms this.

==Page 492==

'''divine . . . prosaic''' 
(Walt Whitman was of course prosaic himself before he became divine.)

'''xanthocroid''' 
Prefix xantho- is from Greek and means yellow. Does the whole word mean "yellow-haired"? Yes, i.e. blondes.

'''Capsheaf''' 
Is this a third speaker, or another name for Ratty? Third speaker. Ratty puts in some words a little bit down the page.

'''viva''' 
Slangy short form of ''viva voce,'' an oral examination.

'''Crayke''' 
???
Crayke is a village and civil parish in the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire, England, about two miles east of Easingwold. Relevant?

'''spot of audit''' 
[http://www.andrewcusack.com/blog/2006/12/drink_audit_ale.php Audit ale,] a strong ale served on a few special days. Some colleges at British universities brew their own or contract it out.

'''Shetland''' 
Shetland Islands, an island group northeast of the Orkney Islands, comprising a county of Scotland.

'''Shetland ponies''' 
one of a breed of small but sturdy, rough-coated ponies raised originally in the Shetland Islands.

'''''D'accord''''' 
French: right, OK.

'''reputation for viciousness''' 
The Shetland pony breed has a repuation for viciousness, even if this reputation isn't entirely accurate.

'''Arab''' 
Arabian hourse. One of a breed of horses, raised originally in Arabia and adjacent countries, noted for their intellegence, grace, and speed.

'''Thoroughbred''' 
One of a breed of horses, to which all race horse belong, originally developed in England by crossing Arbian stallions with European mares.

'''croft''' 
Farm.

'''Mainland''' 
The name of one of the 29 inhabited islands in the Shetland Islands, Scotland, UK. It is the largest island in Shetland Islands, the third largest in Great Britian.

'''Mavis Grind''' 
A narrow isthmus joining the Northmavine peninsula to the rest of Mainland in the Shetland Islands, UK. The name means "gate of the narrow isthmus" in the local dialect. Mavis Grind is said to be the only place in the UK where you can toss a stone across land from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.

'''orthopædic journals''' 
Both prof and pony have to do some twisting in order to get the act done. Their skeletal disorders will, erhhm, ''spur'' the interest of orthopædists. Especially if she kicks.

'''Dymphna''' 
After [http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintd01.htm St. Dymphna,] whose intercession is effective against insanity, possession and epilepsy. Her shrine at Gheel, Belgium, has since the 11th century been a refuge for persons with mental illness and intellectual disability. The afflicted wealthy went to the shrine to be cured; they were boarded with townspeople, beginning a tradition of adult foster care for persons with mental illness which continues to this day; Gheel is a designated state psychiatric hospital center, at which all the patients live in foster family homes.

'''decks full of hearts''' 
(52 or 13 per deck?)

==Page 493==

'''Thucydides... remind me''' 
Thucydides' book is an account of the Peloponnesian war, organized in a rather difficult method in which all the actions of one season are described before proceeding to the next. Here are some erotic possibilities in it, however: 
-Pericles, in his famous funeral oration, says the citizen ought to have an eros for the city. 
-At one point some Athenians are lured out of a garrison by way of a gymnastic (that is male, nude) demonstration. 
-On the eve of the fateful Sicilian expedition, all the oversized phalloi of the hermes are mysteriously knocked off. One of the generals on the expedition, Alcibiades, is accused of the offense and is eventually called called back. In Plato's Symposium Alcibiades drunkenly crashes the party and confesses that Socrates has consistently spurned his sexual advances.

In this context, Thucydides is proposed specifically for its non-erotic qualities. In writing his histories, Thucydides attempted to produce a clinical account of the Peloponnesian war without the passion and inaccuracies of previous histories, such as those of Herodotus. Indeed it is hard to imagine a less erotic work. It is suggested for Cyprian Latewood to help him get over his infatuation with Yashmeen.

'''McHugh''' 
Talking to self?

'''''Peeng''-kyeah''' 
Pinky, name given to Yashmeen by the blonde girls, Lorelei, Noellyn an Faun.

'''alfresceehwh''' 
An alfresco, an outdoor gathering. ''-eehwh'' is a rendering of the accent for comic effect.

'''Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun''' 
Lorelei, more frequently "Loreley": In a famous German myth, a mermaid sitting on a rock by the river Rhine. The rock itself is also named Loreley. With her song, she bewitches the captains of passing ships, who then steer into the rock. The syllable "Ley" derives from a Celtic word for "stone".

Faun: Faunus, the Roman god of fertility, also responsible for nightmares. Fauns are also the Romans counterparts of the Greek "satyrs", followers of Dionysos. Faunus is playing a flute, another connection to music.

Noellyn ??

'''"all blonde, of course"''' 
with all the Germanic mythology around here, possibly a reference to the "blonde/blue-eyed"-cliche of German women.

'''High Albedo''' 
Albedo: power of reflecting light. Blondes reflect more light than brunettes.

'''"dark rock...again and again"''' 
cf "Lorelei"

'''Pinky''' 
Nicknames opposite of truth?

''''''sans merci'''''' 
a reference to Keats's 19th century Romantic ballad 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'. The lady of the title entraps men by making them fall in love with her and abandoning them.

==Page 494==

'''wrong altar''' 
She, a lesbian, tells him that he 'worships' a woman who is wrong for him.

'''gnomic tenses''' 
Gnomic = marked by aphorisms; aphoristic...'gnomic verse, a gnomic style".
American Heritage Dictionary.

: In Greek the gnomic tense is the timeless aorist, i.e. an aorist indicating no special time. In English there is the timeless present tense, e.g. in proverbs. Since the gnomic aorist differs from the usual aorist only in its usage the term "gnomic tenses" seems a little stressed.

'''circs''' 
Short form (typically British): circumstances.

''''If she's not content with a vegetable love'''' 
a reference to Marvell's seventeenth century poem 'To His Coy Mistress'. "Vegetable love" refers to the slow, slow way he would let his love grow, to become "vaster than empires and more slow" had they "world enough and time", but since they don't, since they are in human time, he is trying to 'convince' her to make love with him now.

'''Rugby blue''' 
To be a 'Rugby blue' means to have represented Oxford (colour: dark blue) or Cambridge (light blue) at Rugby, which is a major European sport, invented, supposedly, at Rugby school in England in the nineteenth century.

'''Mâconnais''' 
This refers to a bargain sub-Burgundian wine that comes from the Macon region of France.

<div id="grosssmith">'''George Grossmith...and that jolly Weedon'''</div>
George and Weedon Grossmith, authors of the sublime, hillarious 'Diary of a Nobody', which gave the world the adjective 'pooterish'. Undoubtedly an influence on Pynchon's depictions of the 'oh dear' side of Englishness. Pooter is a 'nobody' who decides to publish his diaries, even though he is of no interest and nothing of any note occurs. A prototypical blogger, some might suggest. Originally published in Punch magazine (I think), set in late 19th Century. Don't know if the Grossmiths went to Cambridge, will check....

The elder George Grossmith performed in Gilbert and Sullivan works. He was not university-educated. The younger G.G. was also a noted performer and collaborated with P.G. Wodehouse.

[plenty of info here: http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/english/DON/Diary_Home.htm]

==Page 495==

'''Junior or Senior?''' 
expressions used at traditional English (independent) schools to refer to younger and older brothers. Thus Smith Junior or Smith Senior.

See [[#grossmith|Grossmith entry]] on preceding page.

'''"Small hands, some evidence of early trauma, cp. Wilhelm II file"''' 
Wilhelm II suffered an injury at birth and had a withered arm. All his photographs show him with the "small hand" in his pocket.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II_of_Germany From Wikipedia]: 
William II, German Emperor (1859-1941), Reigned 1888-1918.

The role of William II in German history is sometimes a controversial issue in historical scholarship. Initially seen as an important, but embarrassing figure in German history until the late 1950s, for many years after that, the dominant view was that he had little or no influence on German policy leading up to the First World War. This has been challenged since the late 1970s, particularly by Professor John C. G. Röhl who saw William II as the key figure in understanding the recklessness and subsequent downfall of Imperial Germany.

'''"Map of the World"''' 
??? Like it says in the text, simply what Renfrew calls all his data.

Although the name is possibly of some significance! Renfrew's dossiers could act as a way of divining holistic truth from a series of perspectives or projections. Obviously interpreting this data requires the correct viewing individual, or "lens." In this way, Renfrew's "Map" is not unlike the Sfinciuno Itinerary.

'''Newmarket''' 
A famous English race-course, hence the following reference to the 'racing season'.

'''Morse and Vassilev''' 
??? In 1896-97 the first radio-telegraphic equipment was imported into Bulgaria for the needs of the armed forces and large postal offices. This was the start of Bulgarian National Radio (BNR). At that time, the equipment was used only to transmit Morse code on electro-magnetic waves. Samuel F. B. Morse, an English speaking American, invented Morse code and the telegraph.(On May 24, 1844 he transmitted the first telegraph message: "What hath God wrought!"). BNR at one time was headed by Orlin Vassilev, a Bulgarian playwright. BNR at one time also employed former (Bulgarian) environment minister Valentin Vassilev.

'''East Rumelian''' 
Cf [[ATD_336-357#Page_356|page 356: East Rumelia. ]] Rumelia was a Turkish province in the Balkan Peninsula. East Rumelia lay mostly in what is now Bulgaria.

'''the Treaty of Berlin''' 
In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 Russia crushed Turkey and forced it to accept the Treaty of San Stefano. This created a greatly expanded Bulgaria under Russian protection. Britain feared that Russia might spread its control to Constantinople (now Istanbul) and to the Suez Canal, and therefore, with Austria, demanded a revised treaty. Weakened by war, Russia consented. The Treaty of San Stefano was replaced thus by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Berlin_%281878%29 the Treaty of Berlin] (1878), the final act of the Congress of Berlin of the Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The new treaty recognized the complete independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. The autonomy of Bulgaria was also recognized but it remained under formal Ottoman overlordship and divied between the Principality of Bulgaria and the autonomous province of ''East Rumelia''. And the Ottoman province of Bosnia was placed uner Austro-Hungarian administration.

'''''zadruga''''' 
Bulgarian: labor cooperative.

'''''tchifliks''''' 
Bulgarian: farms.

'''''gradinarski druzhini''''' 
Bulgarian: gardening (or farming?) associations.

'''gossamer''' 
Sheer, light, delicate, flimsy, airy, tenuous, like a cobweb.

==Page 496==

'''sod . . . pouffe''' 
Derogatory terms for homosexual ("sod" from "sodomite").

'''failed canards''' 
Discredited rumors.

'''Lent . . . Easter . . . Long Vacation''' 
''Lent'' is an anual season of fasting and penitence in preparation for ''Easter'', beginning at Ash Wednesday and lasting 40 weekdays to Easter. After ''Lent'', ''Easter'' the school terms would soon glide into the summer recess, the ''Long Vacation.''

'''Colonial Office''' 
Defunct British Ministry, later Foreign & Colonial Office, now Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

'''Okhrana''' 
a secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana Wikipedia Entry]

'''Ballhausplatz''' 
Location of the Austrian State Chancellery and Foreign Ministry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballhausplatz Wikipedia Entry]

'''Wilhelmstrasse''' 
Administrative Center of the Kingdom of Prussia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelmstrasse Wikipedia Entry]

'''G.F.B. Riemann''' 
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann. A German mathematician who did extensive work in differential geometry. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann Wikipedia Entry]

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Riemann.html Bernhard Riemann] (1826-66), a German mathermatician. He studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen and later taught that subject there. He did important work in geometry, complex analysis, and mathematical physics. Riemanm's work on Riemann geometry laid the foundation for Einstein's general relativity. He investigated the Riemann zeta function about which he stated the famous (and still not completely proven) Riemann hypothesis (see below). He died of tuberculosis in Selasca, Italy, at the age of 39.

'''Zeta function . . . conjecture''' 
The Riemann zeta function. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function/ Wikipedia Entry]

The Riemann zeta function is an extremely important special function of mathematics and physics that arises in definite integration and is intimately related with very deep results surrounding the prime number theorem. While many of the properties of this function have been investigated, there remain important fundamental ''conjectures'' (most notably the Riemann hypothesis) that remain unproved to this day. See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function Zeta function]].

The Riemann hypothesis (''conjecture'') is a conjecture about the distribution of zeros of the Riemann zeta function. The Riemann zeta function is defined for all complex numbers (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page132|page 132]]) not equal to zero. It has zeros at the negative even integers, (-2, -4, -6 and so on), called trivial zeros. The Riemann hypothesis is concerned with the non-trivial zeros, saying, ''"The real part of any non-trivial zero of the Riemann zeta function is 1/2."'' This conjecture remains unproved. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis Riemann conjecture]].

''''joint'''' 
Opium den.

'''Bob's your uncle''' 
An English and Commonwealth expression referring to the ease with which something can be done. Still used, though probably more common in the time in which ''Against the Day'' is set. Possible [http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/70100.html derivations].

'''Limehouse''' 
An area of East London that borders on the River Thames near the Isle of Dogs. The name may derive from the fact that sailors were about as this was a point of embarkation for sea journeys. In the late 19th century the area was famous for opium dens [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limehouse Wikipedia].

==Page 497==

'''Knightsbridge''' 
Knightsbridge is a street in Westminster bourough, London. Notable for its super rich and famous high profile residents and its exclusive shops. (Recent residents included members of the Saudi royal family, Joan Collins, Gucci, Prince Diana and so on; it's shops included Egyptian Fayed's Harrods, etc . . . ) [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightsbridge Knightsbridge]].

'''excess''' 
(So not wholly gossamer?)

'''Coronation Red''' 
The Peer‘s traditional robes at Coronation Day are made of crimson red velvet [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_the_British_Monarch Wikipedia] [http://www.geocities.com/noelcox/Peers_Robes.htm website]. Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were crowned at Westminster Abbey on 9 August 1902 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VII_of_the_United_Kingdom Wikipedia]

'''Ranji and C.B. Fry''' 
Two notable cricketers who would have been in their prime when the novel is set. Both played for England. 'Ranji' is short for Ranjitsinhji and is how he was familiarly known. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/12930.html C.B. Fry] [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/19331.html Ranji]

'''Australian season''' 
A reference to the Australian cricket season which runs throughout their summer and the Eurpoean winter.

More likely to refer to the tour of the Australian cricket team to England in the Summer of 1902. Of particular interest is the fact that the Aussies played a match against Cambridge University on June 9-10. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_cricket_team_in_England_in_1902 1902 Ashes Tour]

'''New Court''' 
A major building in St John's College (founded 1511), University of Cambridge. It was completed in 1831. It's style is Gothic, a romantic version of a mediaeval building; its basic plan is classical. For pictures and more info [http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/about/tour/new_court New Court].

'''Tavernier-Gravet slide rules''' 
French-made, some with special scales (slope conversions, etc.). [http://discover.com/issues/aug-03/features/featslide/ Photograph.]

'''High Church''' 
Anglican

'''Mags and Nuncs and Matins responsories''' 
A responsory is a form of (Christian) chant (call and response, perhaps), which is here qualified by Latin designations for specific prayers. 
Mags: possibly for ''Magnificat,'' the hymn beginning "My soul doth magnify the Lord"? 
Nunc = Now. For ''Nunc dimittis,'' the prayer beginning "Let thy servant now depart." 
Matin = Morning.

'''Trinity''' 
Trinity College, was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 as part of the Univeristy of Cambridge. Most of its major buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. "Princes, spies, poets and prime-ministers have all been taught here." (Trinity's own website [http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=2 Trinity])

'''King's''' 
King's College, Cambridge University, was found by Henry VI in 1441. From the first, the College's buildings were intened to be a magnificent display of the power of royal patronage. King's College Chapel, wanted by the King to be without equal in size and beauty and took nearly a century to complete, is one of the greatest examples of gothic architecture. It is also home to the world famous Choir, envisaged by Henry VI for daily singing of services in the chapel. [[http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/visitors/history.html King's]].

'''not Zion''' 
The context indicated that the original meaning Mount Zion, a hill near Jerusalem, was used; i.e. "not Mount Zion".

'''Compline hour''' 
??? 
bedtime. Compline is the last prayers or service of the day.

'''Te Deum''' 
Te Deum = Thou, O God (Latin).

Since "the Te Deum" was used in the text, it meant the ancient Latin hymn of praise to God, in the form of a psalm, sung regularly at matins in the Roman Catholic Church and, usually in an English translation, at Morning Prayer in the Anglican Church, as well as on special occasions as a service of thanksgiving or commemoration. First words of the hymn, which begin; ''Te Deum laudāmus'' (we praise thee God). Te Deum also refers to the musical setting or form of this hyman with a certain structure which Filtham had blotched. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Deum Wikipedia]

Coincidence? According to the [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14468c.htm Catholic Encyclopedia] there is a discussion among scholars whether the hymn of the Te Deum goes back to a text written by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Cyprian St. Cyprian of Carthage] : "...if the hymn was borrowed from St. Cyprian, why did it not include the "virgines" instead of stopping with "martyrum"?".

'''Khaki Election''' 
A term in British political history. It refered to the British general election of 1900. The reason for this name was that the issues of the election were overshadowed totally by the issue of the (2nd) Boer War (South African War, 1899-1902 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War Boer War]]), as ''khaki'' was the color of the new army uniform. A ''Khaki Election'' is now applied to any British national election which is heavily influenced by wartime or postwar sentiment. 1918 general election (end of World War I) and 1945 election (end of Wordl War II) were both described as Khaki Elections.

'''Filtham''' 
???

==Page 498==

'''violation of . . . child-labor statutes''' 
If such laws applied to children in the choirs of Cambridge colleges, the great length of the composition would keep them at work too many hours.

'''chromaticism . . . Richard Strauss''' 
Chromaticism refers to the use of the chromatic scale in composing music. Ever since Baroque Period (17th to early 18th century) almost all music were compsoed either in major or minor scale, in which only seven of the twelve tones of the octave were used. Beginning in the late Romanic Period (mid 19th to 20th century) the chromatic scale including all 12 tones of the octave was used. By using the tones that are not "supposed" to be in a certain key, the music thus composed had stronger dissonance and exaggerated tension. 

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic era well known for his tone poems and operas. His ''Also sprach Zarathustra'' (1896), a symphonic poem, was made widely popular by Stanley Kubrick's film ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' in 1968 — the music (especially the brass fanfare opening) introduced the memorable ape/man sequence of the film. His many opera includes ''Salome, Des Rosenkavalier, Capriccio'' and others. Chromaticism was not that new to Richard Strauss, but "relentless chromaticism" just might be too "modern" for him.

'''Staindrop''' 
Home of Jeremiah Dixon.

'''"Filtham's Tedium"''' 
(Talk about overlabored puns...)

'''dress regulations''' 
???

'''Gauss''' 
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), a German mathematician and scientist, and one of the all-time greats. He worked in a wide variety of fields in both mathematics and physics including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. His work has had an immense influence in many areas. Riemann was a studen of his at Göttingen. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss Wikipedia].

'''Ramanujan''' 
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. Long before he came to Cambridge and though without any formal university education, Ramanujan made substantial contributions to the anlytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions and infinite series. He, a poor savant from India, was invited in 1914 to Cambridge by G.H. Hardy after he wrote him a letter asking abstruse mathematical questions. In his letter, Ramanujan enclosed a long list of then unproved theorems which he had solved. After his arriving at Cambridge Ramnujan collaborated with G.H. Hardy resulting in important results. He was allowed to enroll in 1914 in Cambridge despite not having the proper qualifications and received a PhD degree in 1916. Plagued by health problems all his life, his health deteriorated rapidly from 1917, and he returned to India in 1919 and died there the following year. Two years efore his death, however, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. [[http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Ramanujan.html Ramanujan]]. Therefore,
". . . Ramanujan here at Trinity . . ." could have happened only between 1914 - 1919.

'''revisited, in some way 'relighted' the scene''' 
Light, mental light.

'''display of hurt feelings''' 
Cf p30.

==Page 499==

'''light up''' 
Dark world vs spark of value.

'''ζ-function''' 
Another reference to the Riemann zeta function.

'''Hilbert thinks of nothing else''' 
The Riemann hypothesis is one of the 20 problems put forth by Hilbert in 1900.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_problem Wikipedia Entry]

'''desire... of rather a specialized sort''' 
???

'''Great Eastern''' 
Railway linking Cambridge and London.

==Page 500==

'''Weierstrass and Sofia Kovalevskaia''' 
Sofia Kovalevskaia was the first woman to apply for a mathematics degree at the University of Goettingen in Germany. She was not accepted at the university, but was allowed to tutor under one of the university's math professors. She wrote a paper there that became an important part of the theory of differential equations.

:Kovalevskaia's private math tutor was Weierstrass at Berlin (see below).

''Karl Weierstrass'' (1815-97), a German mathermatician. He attended the University of Bonn studying law, finance and economics instead of mathermatics, the subject he was really interested in and studied out of shcool. He left the Univeristy of Bonn without a degree and went to the University of Münster for mathematics. Later he became a teacher in the city of Münster. Around 1850 he took a chair at the Technical University of Berlin. For four years (1870-1874) he gave private mathematics lessons to Sofia Kovalevskaia while she was denied the university entrance in Berlin. His investigations were mainly on the topic of "Special Functions": Weierstrass Elliptic Function, Weierstrass Zeta Function, Weierstrass Product Theroem, etc.

''Sofia Kovalevskaia'' (1850-91) Russian mathematician and novelist. She was born in Moscow and showed an interest in mathematics from an early age. When 11 she studied differential and integral analysis from her father's calculus lecture notes that were used as wallpaper in the family house. She was given a special tutor of higher mathematics. At age 18 she entered a "false" marriage (it became genuine later) in order to be able to attend college abroad. In 1869 she enrolled as a provisional student at Heidelberg University. In 1870 she moved to Berlin attempting to study under ''Weierstrass'' and enroll at Berlin University. But the university refused to accept her because of her gender. However, Weierstrass was so impressed by her talent that he gave her private mathematics lessons twice a week for four years. By the spring of 1874, Kovalevskaia had completed three papers. Weierstrass deemed each of these worthy of a doctorate. And with his help, in Kovaleskaia's absence, University of Göttingen granted her a PhD in Mathematics (a historical first) and Master (''summa cum laude'') in Fine Art. In the same year she returned to Russia but failed to get an academic job. She did not practice mathematics for six years but pursued literary work instead. In 1880 she returned to mathematics and applied to teach at universities in Russia but was denied again. Finaly she found employment at Sweden's Stockholm University in 1883. She died of pneumonia in Stockholm in 1891. 
In her short life Kovalevskaia had won a historic place in mathermatics. She was the first woman to receive a doctorate in mathermatics, the first woman to obtain a permanent position on a university faculty in mathematics, the first woman having a place on the editorial staff of a mathematical journal, the first female member of St. Petersburg Academy of Science, and the first woman to win the most prestigeous mathematical contest of her day, an honor equivalent to the winning of a Nobel Prize. Her literary achievements was quite substantial. Her ''Russian Childhood'' won wide acclaim and was translated into many languages (the English edition still avilable). She had a couple of novels (''Nihilist Girl'' etc) published as well. She dabbled in playwriting and produced a steady stream of both fiction and nonfiction publications for Russian journals.

'''Pythagorean doctrine''' 
From the text it refers to Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls. Pythogoras and his disciples believed in reincarnation (or metempsychosis), according to which human souls are immortal and are reborn into other animals after death. ("reborn as a vegetable" may be questionable.) 
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagora Pythagoras], one of the most famous and controversial ancient Greek philosophers, lived from ca. 570 to ca. 490 BC. He spent his early years on the island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey. At the age of 40, he moved to Crotona in southern Italy and most of his philosophical activity occurred there. His philosophical thinking exercised an important influence on the work of Plato. "Pythagoras was famous (1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death . . .; (2) as an expert on religious ritual; (3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time; (4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, . . . and rigorous self discipline." (on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). 
Pythagoras was also a famous mathematician best known for the Pythagorean Theorem and the Music of the Spheres. Known as the father of numbers, his philosophy encompassed harmonics in mathematics, music, cosmology, geometry and had a lasting impact on hermeticism, gnosticism and alchemy.

'''sounds like maths''' 
Yashmeen seems to see 'maths' as otherwordly.

'''folio''' 
an edition of a book in pages that fold in half to make the leaves of a codex.

'''four-color chromolithograph''' 
Chromo--in Chemistry, chromium

'''Snazzbury''' 
???

'''Silent Frock''' 
Cf noise-canceling headphones.

'''toilette''' 
No longer in use in modern english, the term 'toilette' indicated a dressing table covered to the floor with cloth (toile) and lace, on which stood a dressing glass, which might also be draped in lace. Wikipedia

It's still used, and in addition to the dressing table meaning, it refers to how somebody is "got up"--dress, makeup and all.

==Page 501==

'''green, white, and mauve stripes''' 
Colors associated with the Suffragette Movement of the time.Diane Atkinson, one of the leading contemporary scholars on the suffrage movement, edited a book, Suffragettes in the Purple, White, and Green London 1906-1914, which served as a catalog at an exhibition of suffrage memorabilia at the Museum of London and which discusses the symbolism. Atkinson notes that the color scheme was devised by Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence, treasurer and co-editor of the weekly newspaper Votes for Women. In the spring 1908 issue of that paper, Pethick-Lawrence explained the symbolism of the colors:

"Purple as everyone knows is the royal colour. It stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity...white stands for purity in private and public life...green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring."

'''black crepon''' 
The shell is made of black rayon crepon and fully lined to within 2" of bottom hem. From a description of a black [nursing] dress online.

'''Italian-cloth''' 
The Champagne fairs were a circuit of six cloth fairs in the towns of Champagne and Brie, changing location every two months and spanning the year from January to October. At their height, in the 13th century, the Champagne fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers. The fairs, which were already well-organized at the start of the century, were one of the earliest manifestations of a linked European economy, a characteristic of the High Middle Ages.

The towns provided huge warehouses, still to be seen at Provins. From the north came woolens and linen cloth. Wikipedia.

==Page 502==

'''modern lettering''' 
Refers to Art Nouveau lettering popular at the turn of the 20th century and still commonly used on entrance signs for Paris metro stations.

'''"a kind of helical ramp"''' 
Possibly a reference to the Riemann Sphere, which is built in large part upon complex numbers and which look something like a helix. 
[[Image:Riemann Sphere.jpg]]

'''L'ARIMEAUX ET QUEURLIS''' 
Larry, Moe, and Curly's

'''twilling''' 
Twill = A fabric with diagonal parallel ribs. 2. The weave used to produce such a fabric.
TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: twilled, twill·ing, twills
To weave (cloth) so as to produce a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs. From The American Heritage Dictionary

==Page 503==

'''Earl's Court Wheel''' 
Earl's Court is an area of London. A Ferris Wheel there.

Another "paramorphic" parallel to our time: The London Eye, a huge Ferris Wheel built for the Millenium Exposition of 2000. The trip around is not, as Yasmeen notes, thermodynamically reversible, since one would be "changed forever" in the course of the journey around the wheel (in the Heraclitean sense that "No man steps in the same river twice"--the river changes.) 
This is the connection between entropy in thermodynamics and entropy in information theory, embodied in Maxwell's Demon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_Demon], at the center of Pynchon's ''Crying of Lot 49'', now back as a problem in non-Euclidean geometries and multiple dimensions.

'''whelks''' 
A whelk is a large marine gastropod (snail) found in temperate waters.

'''Chinese Turkestan railway shares''' 
Chinese Turkestan is where the Chums of Chance are currently, in the sub-desertine vehicle.

'''jellied eel''' 
An East End of London delicacy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellied_eels Wikipedia]

'''West Ham, the Park, Upton Lane, lads all in claret and blue''' 
The "lads in claret and blue" are kicking a football around, as they are players of current Premiership side West Ham United. Founded in 1895, the "Hammers" are playing their home games at Boleyn Ground aka "Upton Park". Yep, soccer.

'''lupine liminality''' 
Latin: lupus = wolf, limen = threshold. Allusion to the proverbial wolf at the door.

Lupine = any of a genus (Lupinus) of leguminous herbs including some poisonous forms and others cultivated for their long showy racemes of usually blue, purple, white, or yellow flowers or for green manure, fodder, or their edible seeds; also : an edible lupine seed.

The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition, during which your normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to something new.

'''hydrangeas''' 
a kind of flower. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrangea Wikipedia]

'''Hardy,''' 
Cf. [[ATD_219-242#Page 239|page 239:McTaggart . . . Hardy]]. G.H. (Godfrey Harold) Hardy (1877-1947),famous Cambridge mathematician [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy Wikipedia]. He wrote "A Mathematician's Apology" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology Wikipedia] [http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~mss/books/A%20Mathematician's%20Apology.pdf Full Text]. Knew all the most famous intellectuals and was himself very influential.

==Page 504==

'''Harwich... German Sea''' 
Harwich is a town in Essex, England, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east.The North Sea historically also known as the German Ocean. By the late nineteenth century, German Sea was a rare, scholarly usage ...

"The German Sea" is also a public house (p. 489).

'''Hook of Holland''' 
Hoek van Holland in the Netherlands. It is not a hook but the southwest ''corner'' of South-Holland province (Dutch ''hoek'' = corner).

''Hook of Holland'' is also the name of the ferry port, an entry point into Holland and Europe. It is served by ferry sailings from Harwich and is the main entry port when travelling from the UK. It is less than 15 miles southwest of The Hague. [[http://www.eurodrive.co.uk/ports.asp?ID=39&p=Hook-Of-Holland Port of Hook of Holland]].

'''madhouse at Osnabrück''' 
OSNABRUCK, a town and episcopal see of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, situated on the Hase, 70 m. W. of the city of Hanover, 31 m. by rail N.E. of Munster, and at the junction of the lines Hamburg-Cologne and BerlinAmsterdam. Pop. (1905) 59,5 80. The lunatic asylum occupies a former nunnery.

==Page 505==

'''plug hats''' 
a plug hat may be a top hat or a bowler hat.

'''Cobh''' 
the historic port town of Cobh Ireland. Many ocean liners sailed from there, including the Titanic... the port of Queenstown (now known as Cobh)

==Page 506==

'''Euclid''' 
Avenue of classy mansions in Cleveland

'''elms in Cleveland''' 
(Before Dutch elm disease?)

'''went on for years''' 
the Krakatoa eruption put dust and ashes aloft for years.

'''Krakatoa''' 
The correct name is Krakatau. It is a volcanic, uninhabited Indonesia's island lies between Java and Sumatra. A series of cataclysmic explosions of August 26 - 27, 1883, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, collapsed the northern two-thirds of the island beneath the sea, generating an immense tsunamis that ravaged adjeacent coastlines and killed over 36,000 perople. Tephra (volcanic rock and glass fragments) from the eruption fell as far as 1,500 miles downwind in the days following the explosion. The finest fragments were propelled high into the stratosphere, spreading outward as a broad cloud acroos the entire equatorial belt in only two weeks. These particles would remain suspended in the atmosphere for a long time. For years, the earth experienced exotic colors in the sky, halos around the sun and moon, and a spectacular array of anomalous sunsets and sunrises. In the year following the equption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2° Celsius. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years and temperature did not return to normal until 1888. For more about 1883 eruption, map, pictures, current volcanic activities etc see [http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Krakatau.html Krakatau 1] and [http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/current_volcs/krakatau/krakatau.html Krakatau 2].

'''Krakatoa...child's story'''

''The 21 Balloons''? which could have been a Chums of Chance adventure!

'''Shorty''' 
the 'short-order' cook?

==Page 507==
'''I thought sunsets were just supposed to look like that...

Suggestive of the sentiments in Wordsworth's ''Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood'' [http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww331.html]

Also brought to mind The Orb's ''Little Fluffy Clouds'' (1990) in which Rickie Lee Jones answers the question.....

What were the skies like when you were young? [by saying]

''They went on forever
And ''they -- when I
We lived in Arizona
And the skies always had little fluffy clouds
And they were long and clear
And there were lots of stars, at night
And when it rained it would all turn
It -- they were beautiful
The most beautiful skies as a matter of fact
The sunsets were purple and red
And yellow and on fire
And the clouds would catch the colors everywhere
That's -- it's neat
Because I used to look at them all the time
When I was little
You don't see that''''

Circling the rabbit hole....In this song, The Orb uses a harmonica sample from the song ''The Man With The Harmonica'' from the film '''Once Upon a Time in the West''' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Fluffy_Clouds]. The film in turn seems to have strong Pynchon/AtD overtones, (pre-tones??) --
Frank vs. Harmonica, the railroads destroying the Old West...etc. Pynchon showing a strong preference for harmonicas, old movies and songs and protagonists named Frank.

'''how little I cared''' 
(Blaming Krakatoa???)Seems to me she is saying that her feelings for Bert faded, as everything was, maybe, supposed to, as had the fantastic sunsets
caused by Krakatoa when they got back to ordinary.

'''palm upward''' 
One of many "old wives' tales" described in [http://www.childbirthsolutions.com/articles/pregnancy/oldwives/index.php this web page.]

'''Prospect Avenue''' 
Once fashionable street in Cleveland, Ohio.

'''leaf-spring suspension''' 
A form of suspension for wheeled vehicles. Still very occasionally used in automobiles, but more likely nowadays to be seen on a perambulator. A "leaf" here is a long thin strip of tempered steel (they may also be stacked for greater strength).

'''overrun''' 
the excess kerosene when made.

'''Flats''' 
lands around the Cuyahoga River.

==Page 508==

'''Cuyahoga''' 
Major river in Ohio that goes around Cleveland. Famous in the 60's for literally catching on fire from the combustible pollutants in it. Here, Pynchon shows that industrial pollution and its effect on the river. "It's like looking down into the sky".

'''your exact face''' 
(How common?)

'''allowing Erlys do the work''' 
Error in first edition. Should be "allowing Erlys to do the work..."

==Page 509==

'''descending minor triad''' 
in music, an interval of three half tones.

'''Svengali''' 
In George Du Maurier's novel ''Trilby'' (1894), the hypnotist who makes the title character a great singer but keeps her under rigorous control.

'''tea roses''' 
Yellow-orange roses.

'''cosmos''' 
any composite plant of the genus ''Cosmos'', of tropical America, some species of which are cultivated for their showy flowers.

==Page 510==

'''first momentous glance''' 
Page 349 only?

'''Elis''' 
Yale University students, called so after founder Eli Yale.

'''snooting''' 
the act of snubbing, treating scornfully or with disdain (OED)

'''tuned to a 440 A''' 
the elusive 440 A. ... Today's A above middle C has been set at 440 cycles per second or 440 Hertz. ...

==Page 511==

'''preferring''' 
Cf Rose in James Cameron's ''Titanic''.

'''Root Tubsmith''' 
Most likely a fictional character.

'''Fuchs''' 
Lazarus Fuchs (1833-1902), a German mathematician. He worked on differential equations and the theory of functions, ordinary differential equations with complex functions as coefficients, elliptic integrals, etc. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Fuchs.html Fuchs].

'''Schwarz''' 
Herman Schwarz (1843-1921), a German mathematician, known for his work in complex analysis. He worked in Halle, Göttingen and then Berlin, dealing with the subjects of function theory, differential geometry and the calculus of variation. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Schwarz.html Schwarz].

'''Frobenius''' 
Ferdinand Frobenius (1849-1917), a German mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Georg_Frobenius], possibly important here for his contributions to Group Theory and to topology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frobenius_theorem_%28differential_topology%29]. He received his doctorate from the Univeristy of Berlin supervised by Weierstrass. Later, he taught mathematics there as well. He combined results from the theory of algebraic equations, geometry and number theory, which led him to the representation theory and the character theory of groups. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Frobenius.html Frobenius].

'''Professor Manning''' 
Henry Parker Manning (1859-1956) In 1889 he entered Johns Hopkins University to study mathematics, astronomy and physics. When he received his Ph.D. degree in 1891, his first printed paper had already appeared in the ''American Journal of Mathematics''. He was appointed instructor in mathematics at Brown that same year, and “with his advent,” Professor Raymond C. Archibald would later write, “a new era in the development of mathematics at Brown was ushered in.” From 1893 to 1908 Manning offered courses in higher mathematics never previously available at Brown, courses with names like “Theory of functions: algebraic functions, Riemann surfaces, and Abelian functions,” “Substitutions and transformation groups,” and “Quaternions, non-Euclidean geometry, and hyperspace.” After 1908 there were others in the department able to teach higher mathematics. His publications included ''Non-Euclidean Geometry'' in 1901, the first English language text in this subject, ''Irrational Numbers and their Representation by Sequences and Series'' in 1906, and ''Geometry of Four Dimensions'' in 1914. [http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/Databases/Encyclopedia/search.php?serial=M0090]

'''language difference''' 
Kit and Root both speak English, but in different mathematical dialects.

'''Marseilles''' 
Second largest city of France; Mediterannean port, legendarily corrupt.

'''species of tarantella''' 
Tarantella is a fast dance or dance tune in 6/8 time. Probably named for Taranto, not tarantula.

'''dreamed it''' 
(Page?)

'''Cigar Deck''' 
A deck on a luxury yacht, hotel or residence where 'gentlemen' went to smoke cigars.... "venue has everything - including a full bar, cigar deck, and dance floor. ..."

==Page 512==

'''how to stop looking''' 
Cf p27.

'''lobelias''' 
Plant or flower of the genus Lobelia. At least one member of the genus is blue (Blue Lobelia.

'''Victor Herbert''' 
Irish-born American composer (1859-1924) of songs, operettas, light classics.

'''Wolf-Ferrari''' 
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948), born in Venice, composer of many extremely popular operas.

==Page 513==

'''She smlled falsely''' 
Error in first edition. Should be "She smiled falsely."

'''Reuben''' 
A hick, as in the carnie's cry, "Hey, Rube".

'''sailing along on Moonlight Bay''' 
Apparently someone overheard Kit's dialog. This phrase would become part of the song "On Moonlight Bay," Madden (lyrics) and Weinrich (music), 1912.

==Page 515==

'''high-hatting''' 
Snubbing, cutting.

'''memories of desert plateau, mountian peaks...some unexpected river''' 
Instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the back-country Rocky Mountains.
Cf also the description of the landscape Frank's riding through on page 394/395.

'''twenty-knot push''' 
The ship is making twenty knots (20 nautical miles per hour), hence generating a twenty knot wind toward the stern.

'''uncreated''' 
Featureless? ongoing present becoming the future as compared to his memories.

The watery void of Genesis, before creation of the land and life.

'''after 1914''' 
Still 10 years away.

'''S.M.S. ''Emperor Maximilian''''' 
S.M.S.: Seiner Majestäts Schiff, His Majesty's Ship (German or, as in this case, Austrian). One Habsburg Emperor Maximilian was set up in Mexico, then deposed and killed.

'''25,000-ton''' 
The ship's displacement (measure of its size).

'''dreadnoughts''' 
''HMS Dreadnought'' gave her name to a new philosophy that governed the design of capital ships beginning in the 1890s and continuing past the 1920s: high speed, heavy armor, heavy investment in the "main battery" and de-emphasis of secondary battery, main battery comprising the largest practicable guns mounted in turrets on the ship's centerline.

'''Slavonian''' 
Perhaps a deceptive name for the company; Slavonia was an inland province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, northwest of Croatia; Trieste would have been in Slovenia.

'''Schultz-Thorneycroft''' 
???

'''Parsons turbines''' 
Cf. The Steam Turbine, by Sir Charles A. Parsons ---The Rede Lecture, 1911.
Was manufactured and named for Parsons--this lecture was after its extensive use.

'''British men-o'-war''' 
Warships.

==Page 516==

'''shell-rooms-to-be and giant powder magazines''' 
''Stupendica'' contains spaces that will belong to ''Maximilian'' on her transformation. (Indeed, she must contain the shells and powder too.)

'''circular cabins''' 
A battleship turret extends several decks below the gunhouse. No doubt there were stacks of these circular cabins.

'''twelve-inch barrels''' 
Dreadnoughts progressed from 8-inch main guns to 12-inch in a couple of decades.

'''shelter deck''' 
???

'''to fold upward''' 
Transformer fashion.

'''casemates''' 
Turrets.

'''freeboard''' 
The amount of the ship above the water. You need a certain amount of freeboard to maintain balance, but battleships try to limit it as much as possible (so as to present a smaller target).

'''"Dazzle" camouflage''' 
Patterns as described in the text, meant to confuse enemy eyes. [http://web.mac.com/gesamtkunstwerk/iWeb/The_Poetry_of_Sight/Dazzle%20Camouflage.html] Camouflage techniques used in World War I were developed in part by magician Jasper Maskelyne, a descendant of the Astronomer Royal in ''Mason & Dixon.''

'''dihedrals''' 
A dihedral is the figure formed by two planes intersecting in a line. The bow of a ship is pretty close.

'''Fangsley''' 
???

'''less horizontally disposed''' 
less level

Passenger liner has as many decks as possible above waterline. Warship has as many as possible ''below'' waterline, hence it's "taller."

'''Trieste''' 
Trieste is a city and port in northeastern Italy right on the border with Slovenia. It is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, about 70 miles east of Venice across the Gulf of Venice. The city had been occupied, administrated, annexed by various countries in the past. As late as early 19th century Napoleon took it for France, and in 1813 Austrian empire annexed it and kept it until the end of World War I. In 1920 it was transfered to Italy. During World War II German occupied the city until 1945 when Yugoslav partisans under Tito briefly occupied the city. Between 1947 to 1954 Trieste was governed by British and American. Finally, in 1954 the city of Trieste went to Italy and the southern suburb went to Yugoslaiva (now Slovenia).

'''Lloyd Arsenale''' 
Lloyd Shipyard, Austria's commercial counterpart of Stabilimento Tecnico. In 1833 a company with the name ''Lloyd Austriaco'' was founded as a maritime insurance organization. Three years later a new section, the Shipping Section was established and running company's own vessels. In 1853 Lloyd Austriaco started buidling its own shipyard, called ''Arsenale'', both for building new ships and maintenance of the fleet. The shipyard was completed and fully operative in 1861. In 1919 ''Lloyd Austriaco'' changed its name to ''Lloyd Triestino'', currently still operating in Trieste. [[http://www.italiamarittima.it/newhistory.asp?ordernum=10 Lloyd Arsenale]].

'''Stabilimento Tecnico''' 
Technical Plant, a shipyard. Stabilimento Tecnico was an Austro-Hungarian shipbuilding company based in Trieste. It served the Austro-Hungarian Navy on a large scale and was the largest shipyard of that country. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilimento_Tecnico_Triestino Stabilimento]]. Four Tegetthoff class dreadnoughts were built by Stabilimento Tecnico for the Austro-Hungarian Navy: ''SMS Viribus Unitis, SMS Tegetthoff, SMS Prinz Eugen'' and ''SMS Szent Istvan''. They were of about 21,000 ton displacement and a speed of 20 kt with twelve 12-inch guns. Tegetthoff was a 19th century Austrian admiral.[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegetthoff_class_battleship Tegetthoff battleships]]. 
Stabilimento Tecnico and Lloyd Triestino are both currently active. In fact these two establishments are the largest industrial organizations in Trieste.

==Page 517==

'''''merged''''' 
Pynchon writes about bilocation in a peculiar sense: not necessarily one person being in two places, but one ''place'' being two (or one language being two, Dutch/Flemish, Serbian/Croatian).

'''Promontorio''' 
In Italian promontorio is headland, a small stripe of mountain-like terrain surrounded on all but one side by see.

'''O.I.C. Bodine''' 
Gotta be Pig Bodine from ''V.'' and ''GR'' and descendant of Fender-Belly Bodine in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Mason & Dixon''].
:Naw, three different Bodines. (1) Fender-Belly is the patriarch (flourished in the 1760s); (2) the stoker O.I.C. is in his prime in the decade around 1910; (3) Pig serves in WW2 and is still around to go roistering with Benny in the 1960s. The strangest thing about the Bodines—a family with saltwater in their DNA—is that they dropped anchor in Minnesota . . . or ever even visited such an inland spot as [http://www.city.albertlea.org/home.html Albert Lea.]

"O.I.C." is an initialism for Ohio Improved Chester, which is a breed of hog. Jack London actually [http://www.jacklondons.net/palace.html raised them on his ranch]. As has been pointed out, "O.I.C." standing for "Officer in Charge" in the Bodine context is a non-starter, as Bodine is neither an officer nor in charge of anything. He's a stoker, one of the lowest class of laborers aboard. Also, "oic" does have a piggish ring to it ("oink" without the "n"). And of course it also works as Internet slang: "Oh, I see," although this sounds a bit too cutesy for Pynchon, IMHO, and besides, as pointed out above, O.I.C. Bodine ain't the Bodine seen in other Pynchon novels, but most likely the father or uncle of Pig of ''V.'' and ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

In ''V.'', Pig's first appearance in a Pynchon novel (he also appears in "Lowlands," a Pynchon short story Flange's "big gaping idiot buddy"), he brags of his Harley motorcycle (called Hogs, in the vernacular): "Ain't an SP car made that can take my Harley." (p.15) Perhaps this Bodine was given the nickname "O.I.C." by his Navy buddies as a joke, ''because'' the initialism stands for a breed of hog ''and'' "Officer in Charge" (which he's far from) ''and'' sounds like a pig's utterance (We know his putative son's or nephew's laugh sounds like a pig ("Hyeugh, hyeugh ... it was, as Pig intended, horribly obscene" ''V.'', p.14 so maybe it's inherited). And perhaps Pynchon gave him the last name of Bodine to connect him visually and/or temperamentally with the character Jethro Bodine of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Hillbillies ''The Beverly Hillbillies''] (1962-1971), also a big, not-too-smart goofball.

'''fermented potato mash''' 
Cf Veikko's vodka, [[ATD 81-96#Page 82|page 82]].

'''four shafts''' 
Four propellers.

'''''Mauretania''''' 
HMS Mauretania, launched 1907, sister ship of the ill-fated Lusitania (the sinking of the latter propelled the US into WW I). Served as Cunard liner, troopship, hospital ship in WW I.

'''''Zu befehl, Herr Hauptheitzer''''' 
German: Ready for orders, Chief Stoker. (Should be ''Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptheizer.'')

'''Black Gang''' 
The stoking crew, turned black by coal dust.

'''Oberhauptheitzer''' 
German: Master Chief Stoker. (Should be: ''Oberhauptheizer.'')

'''Mannlicher''' 
German military pistol.

'''''"Dampf mehr!"''''' 
German for "more steam!" (Should be: ''Mehr Dampf!'')
:If this is an error, as it appears to be (and as it's marked by [http://www.glanzundelend.de/glanzneu/pynchonpalm.htm German native speakers]), it may stem from a common phrase such as ''Wir haben keinen Dampf mehr,'' we have no more steam. Is there any remote possibility that ''Dampf mehr!'' was a form used in shipboard orders (spoken or telegraphed) at the time of the action?
:Following up this nagging question, I have found some photos of engine room telegraphs with German on the dials: [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiffstelegraf here] and [http://www.digitalstock.de/detail.php?bildnummer=178966&seite=5&abilder=20&uid=&kategorie= here]. Neither refers to ''Dampf'' at all (instead ''volle Kraft'' = full power, ''volle Fahrt'' = full speed). These finds seem to eliminate the possibility that ''Dampf mehr'' is a phrase Pynchon collected in this context.

'''singlet''' 
Undershirt.

==Page 518==

'''ignorant off''' 
Error in first edition. Should be "ignorant of".

'''Marconi room''' 
Radio shack.

'''British and German battle groups were engaged off the Moroccan coast''' 
This could be a reference to the First Moroccan Crisis (a.k.a. Tangier Crisis) taking place between March 1905 and May 1906. This would be in keeping with the timeline of the novel, however, there seems to have been no engagement of troops between British and German forces. On the other hand, this could also be a reference to the Agadir Crisis (a.k.a. The Second Moroccan Crisis) of 1911 where the German gunboat, Panther, was deployed to the Moroccan port of Agadir, threatening British naval supremacy. Although the later altercation seems unlikely given the timeline of the story, Pynchon notes that the S.S. Stupendica received its message "from somewhere else not quite in the world, more like from a continuum lateral to it."

'''design maximum of nine degrees''' 
''Maximilian'' will right herself from a nine-degree heel but may be in trouble if she leans over farther.

'''nymphs''' 
Stage in the life cycle of many insects, including the cockroach.

'''''"Porca miseria"''''' 
Italian: good grief, for heaven's sake, dammit.

==Page 519==

'''tight circle''' 
Military as inane as circus clowns.

'''southeast by east''' 
The compass rose has 32 points, each 11 and a quarter degrees from the next. Southeast by east is one point to the east of southeast, i.e., 123 and three-quarters degrees clockwise from north.

'''deeper levels''' 
(Eg particle vs wave?)

'''A "deeper level" where dualities are resolved''' 
Engine room is far below the main deck, therefore a deeper level. The ''Stupendica/Maximilian'' duality is resolved there because it's a shared space.

'''Chinese''' 
???

Maybe the allusion refers to Chinese boxes, one box containing another box, containing another, etc? In the last box, at the "deeper level" dualities are resolved... don't know...

'''''nicht wahr''''' 
German: aint it true?

'''Graz''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graz Graz] is the capital of the Austrian province of Styria. It is the second largest city, after Vienna, in Austria. Graz's old town is one of the best-preserved city centers in Central Europe and is on the UNESCO list of World Cultural Heritage Sites.

'''bilge-crab''' 
Most likely an insult meaning "below-decks crew".

==Page 520==

'''a Teutonic''' 
Ethnically a German.

'''Tangier''' 
a seaport in Northern Morocco on the west end of the Strait of Gibralta, about 500 miles northeast from Agadir, another Atlantic seaport. (Casablanca is midway between them.)

'''Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli''' 
Infamous Morrocan outlaw/warlord. From this [http://www.explorers.org/publications/books_club/imprint/housetears.php website]: "Several decades before Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Islamic insurgents, an international crisis ignited between the United States and the Middle East. In May 1904 Moroccan warlord Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli kidnapped Ion Perdicaris, a wealthy Greek-American resident of Tangier, in an attempt to extort money from the Sultan of Morocco. President Theodore Roosevelt responded with his "big stick" approach to diplomacy by dispatching a squadron of seven battleships to the Moroccan coast with the order: "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead." The nine-week standoff, with US troops and ships in Tangier Bay and Raisuli holding fort in the mountains, exposed the impotence of emerging American power and a critical misunderstanding about Moroccan politics. When it was discovered that Perdicaris was not an American citizen after all, the US government kept the embarrassing episode a secret until 1933. Profiting royally from the conflict, Raisuli built his palace, which he called the "House of Tears"." [http://www.capitalcentury.com/1904.html another source]

'''Agadir, Queen of the Iron Coast''' 
Agadir is a city in southwest Morocco, capital of the Souss-Massa-Dra region. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agadir Wikipedia] From the [http://www.jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia_Britannica/MOL_MOS/MOROCCO.html Encyclopedia Britannica]: "Sixty miles farther south lies Mogador, beyond which the coast becomes more and more inaccessible and dangerous in winter, being known to navigators as the " Iron Coast." From Cape Sim (Ras Tagriwalt), to m. south of Mogador, the direction is due south to Cape Ghir (Ighir Ufrani), the termination of Jebel Ida u Taman, a spur of the Atlas. Beyond this headland lies Agadir (Agadir Ighir), the Santa Cruz Mayor or Santa Cruz de Berberia
of the Spaniards, formerly known as the Gate of the Sudan.' It is a little town with white battlements three-quarters of a mile in circumference, on a steep eminence 600 ft. high." [http://www.rabat-maroc.net/marocautrefois/index.php?rep=AGADIR old postcards from Agadir]

'''''colonists''...justify German interests...shadow-colonists''' 
In July 1911, the german gunboat "Panther" approached the harbour of Agadir under the pretext to protect german citizens from Sus-tribesmen, resulting in the "Agadir-Crisis" and nearly triggering WW I three years early. As there were no german citizens to protect in Agadir, so one had to be dispatched from Mogador. See [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/boshtml/bos137.htm Morocco Crisis of 1911.] and [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/05/23/its_not_the_first_war_under_false_pretenses/ source]

'''...destined for plantation...''' 
Typo in First Edition.
???

'''Sus... Susi''' 
The Sous Basin [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souss Wikipedia] and it‘s inhabitants, probably.

'''Abdel Aziz''' 
Sultan of Morocco 1894-1908 (aged 10-24yrs.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelaziz_of_Morocco Wikipedia]

'''Canaries''' 
Canary Islands, about 80 miles off Morocco‘s Atlantic coast [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_islands Wikipedia]

'''Many would go crazy and set out in small boats...''' 
Another paramorpic mirror image of our century. The Canaries, a Spanish possession, are the goal of untold thousands of would-be African entrants to the EU, i.e. a route of illegal immigration.

'''Lübeck''' 
Lübeck is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein (northern Germany). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCbeck Wikipedia]

'''Berbers''' 
The Berbers (also called Amazigh people or Imazighen, "free men") are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwest Africa, speaking the Berber languages of the Afroasiatic family. In actuality, Berber is a generic name given to numerous heterogeneous ethnic groups that share similar cultural, political, and economic practices. It is not a term originated by the group itself. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people Wikipedia]. Berbers of southwestern Morocco usually belong to the ones known as Chleuhs [http://c.1asphost.com/imazighen/chleuhs/algeria.htm pics]

==Page 521==

'''tree-climbing goats''' 
Can be seen often, esp. in Morocco [http://www.markhorrell.com/travel/morocco/antiatlas/goats3.html Pic]

'''argan trees''' 
The Argan (Argania spinosa, syn. A. sideroxylon Roem. & Schult.) is a species of tree endemic to the calcareous semi-desert Sous valley of southwestern
Morocco. It is the sole species in the genus Argania. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argan_tree Wikipedia]

'''Gnaoua''' 
The Gnawa or Gnaoua refers at once to a style of Moroccan music with sub-Saharan Africa origins or influence, an ethnic group and religious order at least in part descended from former slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa or black Africans migrated in caravans with the Trans-Saharan trade, or a combination of both [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnawa Wikipedia] [http://www.mincom.gov.ma/english/gallery/music/gnawa.html more on Gnaoua] [http://www.mincom.gov.ma/french/galerie/musique/mp3/gnaoua.mp3 Gnaoua music sample mp3] [http://www.ibiblio.org/gnawastories/GNAWA%20STORIES20cDRIVE.swf nicely made site on Gnawa]

'''''mlouk gnaoui''''' 
Mlouk is the plural of melk, a supernatural entity envoked in the Gnawa rituals. Various types are known and they are distinguished by colors. The following is a google translation of the relevant paragraph from [http://www.bladi.net/2556-les-differents-aspects-de-la-culture-gnaouie.html this site]: "The mlouk are of male or female sex, Moslems or Jews. Their color corresponds to their origins. Thus one distinguishes the mlouks from the sea (bahriyin) to which one allots the light blue; the celestial ones (samaouiyin), have as a color dark blue; the mlouk of the forest (rijal el ghaba), originating in Africa, have as a color the black just like the mlouk pertaining to the troop of Sidi Mimoun, finally the red mlouk (Al homar), related to blood and which haunt the slaughter-houses, have as a color the red. The white and the green, colors symbols of Islam sunnite, are reserved to the called upon saints, in particular Moulay Abdelkader Jilali and Chorfa. To the female mlouk three colors are allotted: the yellow for the coquettery of Lala Reflected, the red for Lala Rkia for its capacity to cure the menorrhagia and the black for Lala Aïcha Kendisha because of its Sudanese origin. The Jewish mlouks which are sometimes called upon after the troop of the female mlouk have the black color. Incense fumigations of various perfumes accompany the invocations by these mlouks, with a preference however for the benzoin or jaoui."

'''Seigneurs Noirs''' 
French: Black Lords. According to the above translation, those most probably are jewish mlouks.

'''Bardo State''' 
Tibetan Bhuddist belief in a state between two mortal incarnations, during which one has direct perception of reality--for better or worse, Karmically speaking. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo]

'''Habsburg navy''' 
Austrian Navy

'''Mogador road''' 
Mogador" is a city and tourist resort in Morocco, near Marrakech on the Atlantic coast. (31°30′47″N)
Mogador is another name for Essaouira [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogador Wkipedia] about 70 miles north of Agadir. [http://www.rabat-maroc.net/marocautrefois/index.php?rep=MOGADOR old postcards Mogador]

'''Tawil Balak''' 
In the Liner Notes for the Album "Love Songs of Lebanon" [http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/trackdetail.aspx?itemid=29129 downloadable from this site] the song ''Tawil Balak Ya Habboub'' translates as "Patience, My Love" - Tawil Balak being the Patience part. (Thats one nice soundtrack, btw!)

"Tawil", according to web-searches, is arabic for "allegorical explanation/interpretation/exegese" (of the Qu‘ran and Sunna texts). "Balak" might refer to the according Tora reading (Parsah) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balak_%28parsha%29 Wikipedia]. cf. Balaam‘s Ass p. 432. Do the cosmopolitan regulars at the bar like Moises spend their time interpreting holy texts?

'''Rahman''' 
???

'''Ostend''' 
a seaport in northwest Belgium. ''Ostende'' in German and French. It is the largest city at the Belgian North Sea coast. (It is about 1,700 miles from Agadir, Morocco.)

'''''Fomalhaut''''' 
The Maritime Digital Encyclopedia lists a "Dutch Vessel" named "Formalhaut" [http://www.ibiblio.org/maritime/photolibrary/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=688&pos=0 pic].

According to several websites [http://skytonight.com/news/3310401.html?showAll=y&c=y 1] [http://www.skyscript.co.uk/pis_aus.html 2] [http://www.icoproject.org/star.html 3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomalhaut Wikipedia] etc. Fomalhaut is the 17th or 18th brightest star as seen from our planet and is located in the constellation called Pisces Austrinus (Southern Fish). The name derives from the Arabic Fum (or Fam) al-Hut, meaning "Mouth of the Fish" or according to a few web-resources the contributor has just visited, "Mouth of the Whale". The latter would mean its a strong connotation with the Biblical Legend of Jonah and the Whale (see annotations for this page below (not a spoiler, i hope).

Among most readers of Science-Fiction "Fomalhaut" is a location as common as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldebaran "Aldebaran"] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiopeia_%28constellation%29 "Cassiopeia"].

As per today (07 01 10) the Wikipedia-Entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Fomalhaut Demon Fomalhaut] is just a stub. According to most sites the contributor just visited, claiming credibility in the Book of Enoch [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch Wikipedia] and due to some more non-canonical catergorizations, Fomalhaut seems to be a member of the infamous gang of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_angel Fallen Angels], a daredevil companero to Lucifer that is. This sub-summation in a hierarchy of angels might refer to some astrological/-nomical constellations of the star Fomalhaut as is.

As usual, with TP, we dont know for sure if theres some outlandish pun intended/-cluded in the name of a person or thing. What, to give variety to it, about a german compositive noun? Ger. "formal" = formal (like in formal behavior) + "haut" = skin; "Formal Skin".

'''Moïsés''' 
???

'''Jonah... Massa''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah Jonah Wikipedia Entry] [http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/jonah/jonah.html "Jonah on the Web"] From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Morocco website]: "Some 60 m. farther south (from Agadir), at the mouth of a river known by the same name, is the roadstead of Massa, with a mosque popularly reputed the scene of Jonah's restoration to terra firma."

==Page 522==

'''Two Fishes, two Jonahs, two Agadirs?''' 
The Jewish Encyclopedia 1901-1906 mentions rabbinic literature regarding two fishes - one male, one female - having swallowed Jonah: check out the "fish" paragraph [http://72.14.221.104/search?q=cache:8_12F1Yp1YoJ:www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp%3Fartid%3D388%26letter%3DJ+jonah+encyclopedia&hl=de&gl=at&ct=clnk&cd=1 here]. Both Tarshish (Cadiz), the "Agadir" in southwestern Spain, and Agadir in Morocco likely were founded by the Phoenicians: "Cadiz bears a Phoenician name, a deformation of Gaddir (wall), which we find in the Berber city of Agadir in Morroco." [http://faculty.uml.edu/jgarreau/50.315/Europ1.htm source]

'''kashbah''' 
Wikipedia entries on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasbah Kasbah] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casbah Casbah] [http://www.rabat-maroc.net/marocautrefois/AGADIR/agadir-la-casbah-vue-en-avion.jpg The Casbah of Agadir as seen from above]

'''Ighir Ufrani''' 
a.k.a Cape Ghir, a cape north of Agadir.

'''''Mogador herring''...''alimzah''...''tasargelt''''' 
From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Morocco Morocco Entry]: "Occasionally a small shoal (of mackarel) may be found as far south as Mogador. Soles, turbot, bream, bass, conger eel and mullet are common along the coast, and southern Morocco is visited occasionally by shoals of a large fish called the azlimzah (sciaena aquila), rough scaled and resembling a cod, and the tasargelt (Temnodon saltator), the "blue fish" of North America. Crayfish, prawns, oysters and mussels swarm in the rocky places, but the natives have no proper method of catching them, and edible crabs seem unknown. The tunny, pilchard and sardine, and a kind of shad known as the "Mogador herring," all prove at times of practical importance."

azlimzah (sciaena aquila) [http://www.finerareprints.com/animals/histoire_naturelle/vol_hn_fish_4999.htm pic] (the lower one).

tasargelt (Temnodon saltator) [http://www.amatorbalikci.net/resimupload/lufer.jpg pic] (not sure if this is the real thing!)

'''scruff''' 
???

'''Staketsel''' 
According to the [http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staketsel Dutch Wikipedia] and its link to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier english site] this means "pier". [http://arglist.com/cgi-bin/image?gallery=oostende&name=20040909-004 pic]

'''lazarettes''' 
Below-decks storage space in the stern of a vessel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarette].

'''''mon chou''''' 
"My cabbage." A french term of affection.

==Page 523==

'''moon deck''' 
???

'''lower orlop''' 
Lowest deck of a multi-decked vessel (OED).

'''lateen-riggers''' 
Boats or larger craft with triangular sails rigged fore-and-aft (picture: [http://www.carfilhiot.co.uk/media/1/20050607-rig.jpg]common in the Mediterannean [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen] after introduction by the Romans in the 3rd century.

'''Dally had expected Bria would be the first...''' 
Editorial error? If one substitutes "Dally" with "Erlys" this sentence makes much more sense.

==Page 524==

'''exhilirated''' 
Second occurrence of this misspelling of ''exhilarated.'' (Cf. page 236, line 38: "exhiliration".)

'''Piazza Grande''' 
The central square in many Italian cities.

'''Denza''' 
Cf [[ATD_336-357#Page 353|page 353]]. Luigi Denza (1846-1922), Italian composer, most famous for his "Funiculi, funicula".

'''Antonio Smareglia''' 
Italian opera composer (1854-1929).

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

ATD 219-242

2007-05-02T11:07:33Z

Pynch: /* Page 222 */

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

==Page 219==

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

:In the Pythagorean tetractys the supreme symbol of universal forces and processes are set forth the theories of the Greeks concerning color and music. The first three dots represent the threefold White Light, which is the Godhead containing potentially all sound and color. The remaining seven dots are the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale. The colors and tones are the active creative powers which, emanating from the First Cause, establish the universe. The seven are divided into two groups, one containing three powers and the other four a relationship also shown in the tetractys. The higher group that of three becomes the spiritual nature of the created universe; the lower group that of four manifests as the irrational sphere, or inferior world. <ref>From [http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/ ''The Secret Teachings of All Ages''] by Manly P. Hall (1928)</ref>

:This division (three/four) has to be related to the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) of the [http://www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html Medieval liberal arts.]

More effably, if you flip the Tetractys left to right, it gives the positions of the pins in ten-pin bowling.

The acronym T.W.I.T is most appropriate: a twit is an ineffectual buffoon. Neville and Nigel are certainly twits.

I believe the above really misses the Big Symbol, i.e., Pynchon's linking of T.W.I.T. with the vagina, i.e., the female ''sex'' organ. "T.W.I.T." sounds like no, ''is'' a cross between "clit" and "twat." And, natch, it's headed up by [[#Page 220|Nookshaft]]. And, let's face it, that tetractys is surely an inverted beaver, yes? (See [[ATD 171-198#Page 183|"Beavers of the Brain"]]). Its male counterpart is [[ATD 397-428#Page 405|Candlebrow U.]], to be encountered down the road apiece (and that ain't no spoiler!).

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon. "Crescent" is a female symbol in many mythologies and cultures, and it reinforces T.W.I.T.'s association with the female sex. But "Chunxton"?

:The moon is seen as a female symbol, and was worshipped in ancient times as a powerful force. It is believed to be linked to the unconscious and our feminine side. The sacredness of the moon has been connected with the basic cyclic rhythms of life. The changing phases of the moon were linked to the death and rebirth seen in crops and the seasons, and also to the female monthly cycle that controls human fertility. The moon calendar is still important and many festivals exist around the lunar phases. [http://www.new-age.co.uk/moon-dates.htm]

''Chunxton'' may be derived from "chunk stone" or "chunk(s) town." I'm inclined to favor the first. "Chunk stone" has two main meanings: (1) stone that's quarried in chunks instead of blocks, slabs or crystals; (2) a magical stone that figures in some American Indian stories. Turquoise and amethyst chunk stones are often made into jewelry as-is, or [http://www.bridastone.com/chunkstone.htm larger chunks of (say) marble] can be used as decoration. Here are links to two Indian stories in which people use chunk stones in finding or tracking: [http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/mtsi156.htm first,] [http://romeoandjuliet.ws/books/native_american/se/mtsi/mtsi270.shtml second.] Of course it's also possible that "chunk" is the verb meaning "throw," in which case there ought to be a "glass houses" connection somewhere; I can't find it.

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

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

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

'''century had rushed . . . out the other side''' 
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900. ??? A century is 100 years. The one referred to here lasted from 1800-1899 and, since it's 1900, it has "rushed to its end."
:Missing the point. The image focuses on the ''zero.'' And please, let's not have that sterile argument about when a century begins!

==Page 220==

'''not even if that tartan were authentic''' 
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

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

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

'''lyre''' 
an ancient form of harp, so syrinx and lyre are like flute and harp. A famous Concerto for flute and harp is the work of G. F. Handel, who also composed the ''Messiah.''

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

'''Nicholas Nookshaft''' 
Grand Cohen Nicholas Nookshaft's name reinforces the linking of [[#Page 219|T.W.I.T.]] to the female sex organ, "Nooky shaft" being a vulgarism for the vagina. Interestingly, "shaft" is both a rod or pole, or penis, as well as a vertical passageway, thus its connations are bisexual.

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

==Page 221==

'''Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now''' 
We can infer that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another. A review of the explosion episode, particularly with [[ATD_171-198#Page_188|the annotations to p. 188,]] will be worthwhile.

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

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

==Page 222==

'''The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable''' 
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

'''Eighteenth Hussars''' 
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

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

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

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

'''In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—''' 
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

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

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

See also the novel ''The Greater Trumps'' by Charles Williams for a similar intrusion of the characters of the Major Arcana into everyday English life.

22 is two times two, so a quaternion...

==Page 223==

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

==Page 224==

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

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

'''the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids''' 
Peter Ackroyd's recent ''London, the Biography'' devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid "Druid"].

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

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

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

==Page 225==

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

'''Next they'll be letting you folks vote.''' 
Women were granted the right to vote in England in 1928.

'''"the vast jangling thronged somehow monumental London evening"''' 
This kind of eschewing of punctuation might be expected in Joyce but it's not typical of Pynchon and seems to serve no special purpose here. A typo?

'''Pamela Colman Smith''' 
Illustrator of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith "Wikipedia"].

'''Arthur Edward Waite''' 
Occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Waite Wikipedia]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Ucken-fay is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin "pig latin"] for 'fucken'.

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
A literal translation of "stuff one's face", though this is not how it is said in French (it would be se gaver or se baffrer). [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

'''cigar-divan''' 
A smoking salon (divan) for cigar smokers.

Interestingly, a work by Robert Louis Stevenson, from 1903, entitled The Dynamiter begins with a "Prologue of the Cigar Divan".

==Page 226==

'''Seven Dials''' 
bad area in London, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials Wikipedia entry]

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

'''growler''' 
Four-wheeled [http://www.bbno.freeserve.co.uk/glossary.htm carriage] drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

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

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

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/index.html Cambridge University] is one of the oldest and the best universities in the world. In 2009 it will be celebrating its 800th Anniversary. In its early day, Cambridge was a center of the new learning of the Renaissance and of the theology of the Reformation; in modern times it has excelled in science. It is now a confederation of 31 Colleges (such as King's, Girton, St.John, Trinity and others mentioned in ATD), consists of over 100 departments and faculties, and other institutions. Since 1904, 81 affiliates of Cambridge have won Nobel Prize in every category: 29 in Physics, 22 in Medicine, 19 in Chemistry, 7 in Economics, 2 in Literature and 2 in Peace.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-August_University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen Göttingen University], one of the most famous universities in Europe, founded in Göttingen, Germany, in 1737 by King George II of England in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. At the end of the 19th century, it became world famous because of its Departments of Mathematics and Physics and rivaled Cambridge for eminence. The reputation of the university was founded by many eminent professors who are commemorated by statues and plaques all over the campus. It claimed 44 Nobel Laureates. But it suffered from the 1933 Great Purge of the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish Physics" and never recovered its original fame.

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

'''English, . . . , Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components''' 
''Not to mention'' them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

==Page 227==

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

'''mamluk lamps''' 
A [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/07/nfe/hob_17.190.985.htm mosque lamp]
from the [http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/mamluks.php mamluk] era.

'''...the Kabbalist Tree of Life, with the names of the Sephiroth spelled out in Hebrew, which had brought her more than enough of that uniquely snot-nosed British anti-Semitism... ''' 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] is the ancient study of Jewish mysticism, long shrouded in mystery and kept from all but a devout few of the most dedicated Talmudic scholars. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_Life_Medieval.jpg.jpg Tree of Life] is one of the central symbols of Kabbalah, supposedly a physical representation of the path of enlightenment from the most base knowledge of the physical world (at the bottom), to the highest spiritual planes of understanding (at the top). The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sephiroth] are the nodes of the Tree, representing the various "stages" of understanding. Of course, tihs is all a very gross oversimplifcation and hardly does justice to the term itself.

The "Quabbalah" or "Cabalah" being studied by Madonna and others in Hollywood is a secularized and co-opted form of the original Kabbalah, which is deeply connected to the Torah and Jewish life.

In Medieval Europe, Kabbalist scholars wore amulets and other symbols on their clothing, and were often misunderstood to be magicians or wizards (think Merlin). The common magician's expression "abra cadabra" has Kabbalistic origins.

'''"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"''' 
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

'''English Rose''' 
The phrase "English Rose" or "Bonnie English Rose" when applied to a woman means her skin is unblemished, her coloring subtle, her temper sweet. Madame Eskimoff, in short, is a beauty in a traditional English style. 
(Incidentally, an officially unrecognized designation of [http://www.marinrose.org/englishroses.html roses].)

==Page 228==

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

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

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

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry]. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

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

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
The Yorkshire Seeress, investigated by WT Stead. [http://www.wholeagain.com/prophecyfodor.html cite]

'''assassination''' 
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

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

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]. The Auxetophone appears to have been a sound amplification device, not a recorder.

'''electros of the original wax impressions''' 
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

==Page 229==

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

'''the Russo-Turkish War''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 The Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878), the latest Russo-Turkish War of many fought between these two contries since 16th century as a result of Russian attempts to find an outlet on the Black Sea and to conquer the Caucasus, dominate the Balkan Peninsula, gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and retain access to world trade routes. The last Russo-Turkish War came as a result of the anti-Ottoman uprising (1875) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria. On Russian instigation, Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebels; after securing Austrian neutrality, Russia openly entered the War in 1877. The War ended in 1878 resulted in the Treaty of San Stefano which so thoroughly revised the map in favor of Russia and her client, Bulgaria, that the European powers called a conference (the Congress of Berlin) to revise its terms by the Treaty of Berlin.

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge, founded in 1441. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

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

'''tweeny''' 
A [http://www.bartleby.com/68/30/830.html between-maid].

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

'''had the young Queen died then without issue''' 
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

'''sixty years ago''' 
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

'''Salic law''' 
originated in the Late Roman Empire as Germanic tribes invaded and their law codes were translated into Latin and written down. Salic Law was that of the
Franks who settled in present-day northern France and the law code of Charlemagne. Over the course of the Middle Ages it was largely replaced by Roman Law. For examples, see [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/salic-law.html]. 

However, Salic Law continued to be used in a number of European areas to decide matters of noble inheritance. Specifically, Salic Law stated that no female could inherit rulership. (above by [[User:Owl of Minerva|Owl of Minerva]] 18:03, 4 April 2007 (PDT)) When King William IV, ruler of both the United Kingdom and Hanover, died, the Crowns separated. Hanover practiced Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

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

It can describe Ernst August and still be an allegory of Thatcher. The description of Ireland fits that of some world-views during her time.

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

==Page 231==

'''Orange Lodges''' 
Lodges of the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland and Scotland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_lodge Wikipedia entry]. The Orange Order was hostile to Catholicism and the idea of Irish Home Rule or independence.

'''"from the first to the twelfth of July, anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim."''' 
i.e. anniversaries of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Boyne Battle of the Boyne] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aughrim Battle of Aughrim] of the Williamite War in Ireland.

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

'''"immune to Time, [...] neither of them aging"''' 
Cf Oscar Wilde's only novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray], in which Dorian Gray remains young while his portrait ages.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201). The definition of springtide is springtime.

==Page 232==

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

'''punters''' 
Punter is being used in the sense of someone who bets, someone who is taking a chance.
Or more probably in the common extended sense meaning merely "customer"

'''''akousmata''''' 
Greek: things heard. [[A|Good information under "A" in the alpha index.]]

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

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

'''maquillage''' 
French: makeup.

==Page 233==

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

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

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

'''"pinky"''' 
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

==Page 234==

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

'''''tonight's the night''''' 
Considering the content here, probable reference to Neil Young's drug-addled album and its title song, "Tonight's The Night" from 1975. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonight%27s_the_Night_%28album%29 Wiki]

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

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

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

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

==Page 235==

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

'''extractors . . . distillation columns''' 
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
A trembler is a kind of motion detector used in both bombs and alarms; one kind has a flexible stem with a heavy contact on the free end so that disturbing the package it contains causes a trigger circuit to close. A timer uses a clocklike mechanism to bring two contacts together.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. [http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C-066-William-Powell/dp/0962303208 Amazon w/author's note]

==Page 236==

'''Breathless hush in the close tonight''' 
Dr. De Bottle quoting from Henry Newbolt's poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada,"]] which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

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

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

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. [http://www.334notout.com/ashes/reports/report21.htm dates] A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

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

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

'''exhiliration''' 
Misspelling of ''exhilaration.''

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini''' 
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia.] But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

'''get the Ashes back . . . next year''' 
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and /arch 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

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

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

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

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

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

Also, note the hand on the devil tarot card above.

Shin "also stands for the word Shaddai, a name for God. Because of this, a kohen (priest) forms the letter Shin with his hands as he recites the Priestly Blessing. In the mid 1960s, actor Leonard Nimoy used a single-handed version of this gesture to create the Vulcan Hand Salute for his character, Mr. Spock, on Star Trek."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_%28letter%29#In_Judaism]

"In the Septuagint and other early translations Shaddai was translated with words meaning "Almighty". The root word "shadad" (שדד) means "to overpower" or "to destroy". This would give Shaddai the meaning of "destroyer" as one of the aspects of God. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism#Shaddai]

...and if we look back to the Devil tarot card we see the shin hand sign and the inverted pentagram. Thus through Eliphas Levi and then Coleman-Smith/Waite a connection is created between shin and the inverted pentagram. And then we can make connections with the Jeshimonians and the TWITsters.

This might be why "the cure grows right next to the cause" in Jeshimon. They are under the winged protection of God-the-Destroyer.

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (Pages 84 - 85)

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

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

'''three-percent consols''' 
British "consolidated" bonds, for many years the conservative investment ''par excellence.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''mental''' 
Not mental as in "of the mind" but mental as in "mad". "You're mental, you are" is a common british playground taunt.

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

'''Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight''' 
I.e., sometimes your horse wins.

'''ENCYCLICAL''' 
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical Wikipedia article] explains and adds a list of papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as its title (''Multi et Unus'' in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an atheist, should send out an encyclical!

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart] (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in ''Nature of Existence'' (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page_412|page 412]]: dismissing . . . the ''existence'' of Time).

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html Godfrey Harold Hardy] (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

'''''Multi et Unus''''' 
Many and One.

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

'''the Laplacian, a relatively remote mathematicians' pub''' 
A little Pynchonian joke? The Laplacian operator is a component of the Schrödinger equation, the basis of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics was famously rejected by Albert Einstein (many references on the net but see [http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/dice.html Stephen Hawking]), known for his theories of relativity. Moreover, quantum mechanics deals with the very small and relativity with the very large (this is a simplification of course), so the Laplacian is indeed remote from relativity!
:No such pub during ''my'' stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, according to [http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/ this] list.

==Page 240==

'''Worse than Gordon at Khartoum''' 
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon Wikipedia] cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film ''Khartoum'', in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

==Page 241==

'''"You recognize him?"''' 
As, presumably, Webb.
:How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium is dynamite, not phosgene.
:Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).
:Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.
:Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that recognition.
:Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.
:Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the government.
:De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.

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

==Page 242==

[[Image:globenorth.gif|thumb|150px|The northern hemisphere]]

'''''unheimlich''''' 
German: uncanny, sinister.

 

==References==
<references />

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

ATD 199-218

2007-05-02T10:59:18Z

Pynch: /* Page 202 */

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

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]. The Online Etymology Dictionary seems to be all wet on this one. A natatorium is an '''indoor''' swimming pool and the etymology does not agree with the etymology in the [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/natatorium "American Heritage Dictionary"]. There are natatoriums throughout the USA, for example, on college campuses, used for swim meets. The Waikiki WW I Memorial Natatorium in Honolulu, Hawaii, is a famous natatorium.

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

"Young Cooper" is also the appellative of Dale Cooper, the FBI agent who is one of the main characters in David Lynch famous series "Twin Peaks"... Don't know...

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

Jackdaw in Czech is "Kafka" --[[User:jackmw|jackmw]] 18:28, 04 April 2007 (PST)

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Pynchon must be laughing his tits off at some of this stuff. "Soul to soul" and "down Mexico way" are just expressions - that's how they found their way into songs. TRP is a bright guy and if he'd wanted for some reason to allude to Stevie Ray and Jimi at this particular point (why, for god's sake?) he'd have found a more satisfying way of doing it.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
Jeshimon is typically rendered from Hebrew as desert or wasteland. It appears in the Bible, 1 Samuel 26:1, "And the Ziphites came unto Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doth not David hide himself in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon?"

Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

There seem to be differences between commentators as to whether Jeshimon refers to a specific place or not (although the broad consensus is that it doesn't, but see for instance [http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Jeshimon NetBible]). So Jeshimon may or may not be an actual place but is certainly not pleasant to be in, befitting the mysterious, anarchic town of death in AtD

==Page 208==
'''Mortalidad''' 
Spanish for mortality.

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

'''subornation''' 
The act of inducing (a person) to commit an unlawful or evil act.

Reef learns that for a price even the "laws" here can be bent.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

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

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's revolver; [[ATD_81-96#Page_88|see annotations to page 88,]] where it is first mentioned.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

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

ATD 199-218

2007-05-02T10:59:00Z

Pynch: /* Page 203 */

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

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]. The Online Etymology Dictionary seems to be all wet on this one. A natatorium is an '''indoor''' swimming pool and the etymology does not agree with the etymology in the [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/natatorium "American Heritage Dictionary"]. There are natatoriums throughout the USA, for example, on college campuses, used for swim meets. The Waikiki WW I Memorial Natatorium in Honolulu, Hawaii, is a famous natatorium.

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

Jackdaw in Czech is "Kafka" --[[User:jackmw|jackmw]] 18:28, 04 April 2007 (PST)

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Pynchon must be laughing his tits off at some of this stuff. "Soul to soul" and "down Mexico way" are just expressions - that's how they found their way into songs. TRP is a bright guy and if he'd wanted for some reason to allude to Stevie Ray and Jimi at this particular point (why, for god's sake?) he'd have found a more satisfying way of doing it.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
Jeshimon is typically rendered from Hebrew as desert or wasteland. It appears in the Bible, 1 Samuel 26:1, "And the Ziphites came unto Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doth not David hide himself in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon?"

Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

There seem to be differences between commentators as to whether Jeshimon refers to a specific place or not (although the broad consensus is that it doesn't, but see for instance [http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Jeshimon NetBible]). So Jeshimon may or may not be an actual place but is certainly not pleasant to be in, befitting the mysterious, anarchic town of death in AtD

==Page 208==
'''Mortalidad''' 
Spanish for mortality.

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

'''subornation''' 
The act of inducing (a person) to commit an unlawful or evil act.

Reef learns that for a price even the "laws" here can be bent.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

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

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's revolver; [[ATD_81-96#Page_88|see annotations to page 88,]] where it is first mentioned.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

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

ATD 199-218

2007-05-02T10:57:38Z

Pynch: /* Page 203 */

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

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]. The Online Etymology Dictionary seems to be all wet on this one. A natatorium is an '''indoor''' swimming pool and the etymology does not agree with the etymology in the [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/natatorium "American Heritage Dictionary"]. There are natatoriums throughout the USA, for example, on college campuses, used for swim meets. The Waikiki WW I Memorial Natatorium in Honolulu, Hawaii, is a famous natatorium.

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

"Young Cooper" is also the appellative of Dale Cooper, the FBI agent who is one of the main characters in David Lynch famous series "Twin Peaks"... Don't know...

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

Jackdaw in Czech is "Kafka" --[[User:jackmw|jackmw]] 18:28, 04 April 2007 (PST)

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Pynchon must be laughing his tits off at some of this stuff. "Soul to soul" and "down Mexico way" are just expressions - that's how they found their way into songs. TRP is a bright guy and if he'd wanted for some reason to allude to Stevie Ray and Jimi at this particular point (why, for god's sake?) he'd have found a more satisfying way of doing it.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
Jeshimon is typically rendered from Hebrew as desert or wasteland. It appears in the Bible, 1 Samuel 26:1, "And the Ziphites came unto Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doth not David hide himself in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon?"

Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

There seem to be differences between commentators as to whether Jeshimon refers to a specific place or not (although the broad consensus is that it doesn't, but see for instance [http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Jeshimon NetBible]). So Jeshimon may or may not be an actual place but is certainly not pleasant to be in, befitting the mysterious, anarchic town of death in AtD

==Page 208==
'''Mortalidad''' 
Spanish for mortality.

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

'''subornation''' 
The act of inducing (a person) to commit an unlawful or evil act.

Reef learns that for a price even the "laws" here can be bent.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

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

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's revolver; [[ATD_81-96#Page_88|see annotations to page 88,]] where it is first mentioned.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

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

ATD 97-118

2007-05-02T09:48:11Z

Pynch: /* Page 114 */

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

==Page 97==

'''the iron of their shoes . . . seeking the magnetic memory of that long-ago visit''' 
Familiar cartoon gag, a ''horseshoe'' magnet attracting all sorts of hardware as it flies through the air.

'''the Rebellion''' 
What the North called the Civil War. [[ATD_1-25#Page_7|Another reference...]]

'''Tesla, Dr. Nikola''' (1856-1943) 
Tesla was a Serb-American inventor, engineer and physicist whose patents and theoretical work form the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, radio, and a bunch of other stuff. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Wikipedia entry] Tesla researched in Colorado Springs from May 1899 - January 1900, a location he chose because of the frequent thunderstorms, the high altitude, and the dryness of the air. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Colorado_Springs Wikipedia on Tesla at Colorado Springs].

Much of the the funding for his Colorado Springs laboratory came from Colonel John Jacob Astor. Tesla's friend and patent lawyer, Leonard E. Curtis, persuaded the El Paso Power Company to supply Tesla with all the electricity he wanted, free of charge. The arrangement ended the night Tesla's activities burned out the dynamo and the entire city lost power. [http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_colspr.html PBS: Tesla - Master of Lightning]

"Tesla logged in his diary on July 3, 1899 that a separate resonance transformer tuned to the same high frequency as a larger high-voltage resonance transformer would transceive energy from the larger coil, acting as a transmitter of wireless energy, which was used to confirm Tesla's patent for radio during later disputes in the courts. These air core high-frequency resonate coils were the predecessors of systems from radio to radar and medical magnetic resonance imaging devices." [http://www.crystalinks.com/tesla.html] This information was later used to confirm his patent for radio which he received posthumously in 1946, 3 years after his death. [http://www.resonanceresearch.com/nikola-tesla-coils-picture-colorado-1899-labratory.htm].

Pynchon confuses this 03 July 'vision', during a natural electrical storm, with later experimental generation of high voltages.

[http://www.teslasociety.com The Tesla Society] confusingly describes Tesla as a "Serbian-born American" but states his birthplace as Smiljan, Croatia.

'''Vectorist . . . by way of the Electricity''' 
Vector symbolism offers an economical way to describe electrical processes; electrical engineers still use vector algebra and vector analysis combined with concepts from complex number theory.

==Page 98==

'''a turbine generator located underneath a waterfall''' 
Not sitting there to catch the falling water. A waterfall is a convenient place for a power plant because you can get easy access to two elevations: take in water at the top, install your turbine at the bottom. The mention of penstocks and other plumbing farther down the page confirms that the flow is being captured in pipes at the head of the fall and run through a turbine at the bottom.

'''engineering students... from Cornell, Yale''' 
Cornell is Pynchon's alma mater, where he initially studied engineering. [[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchon bio]]

'''Maxwell''' 
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was a Scottish mathematical physicist among the pioneers of electromagnetism. Pynchon made use of his theoretical "Maxwell's Demon" in ''The Crying of Lot 49''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell Wikipedia entry]

'''Maxwell's ''Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'' of 1873''' 
Full text of [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmagne01maxwrich Volume 1] and [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmag02maxwrich Volume 2] at the Internet Archive.

==Page 99==

'''the Invisible''' 
Up to this point there have been many mentions of things invisible, here capitalized. Recalling Blundell's quote from p. 24, suddenly everything connects and makes sense to Kit after his revelation. It is a mystical experience for him as he reaches this knowledge through something like a voice telling him.

'''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 in Ireland''' 
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 side of the nearby [[Brougham_Bridge |Broom (or Brougham) Bridge]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

'''a jump from one place to another''' 
An allusion to quantum jump (or quantum leap), which would be proposed some years later as a model for the electron's transition between energy states within an atom and as the sole cause of the emission of electromagnetic radiation, including that of ''light'', by atoms. Interestingly enough, the term "quantum leap" would later become a standard vernacular term to describe abrupt advances. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_leap Wikipedia entry]

'''with . . . what perilous æther opening between and beneath''' 
The etymology of ''air'' includes ''æther.'' The gap between initial and final states is a region where there's nothing to "support" the particle making the quantum jump.

'''the truth he now possessed in his personal interior, certain and unshakable''' 
Kit's belief in Vectorism is solidified. 
Not belief. He's broken through to a state where he doesn't have to write the math down—he sees directly from problem statement to solution.

'''Jack, we're seventeen''' 
Around 1900.

'''Pike's Peak or Bust!''' 
The slogan of miners heading to Colorado during the Gold Rush of 1859.

'''Frank got so nervous about climbing''' 
Is Frank acrophobic?

'''Cañon City alumnus''' 
An ex-convict who has done time in the Colorado pen.

'''swamping''' 
Menial work.

==Page 100==

'''Lieutenants of Industry Scholarship Program''' 
The metaphor "Captain of Industry" gets dusted off; Vibe is the captain, so his minions can't go any higher than lieutenants.

'''Mr. Merriwell, we really need this touchdown''' 
An allusion to the fictional character Frank Merriwell, an adventuresome student at Yale and football hero, he was created by the pulp fiction writer Gilbert Patten, who wrote under the pen name Burt L. Standish. The first story, "Frank Merriwell: or, First Days at Fardale" appeared in ''Tip Top Weekly'' on April 18, 1896. Merriwell went on to appear in comic books, radio programs, and dime novels. As the passage suggests, Merriwell constituted an idealized picture of the east coast, old money elite. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Merriwell Wikipedia Entry on Frank Merriwell]

'''Yale''' 
This possible deal with the devil that Kit makes to get into Yale recalls the evil pact made to get Tyrone Slothrop into Harvard in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''Horsefeathers''' 
The title of a 1932 Marx Brothers film ("Horse Feathers"). Another possible indication for the promised Groucho Marx cameo. See also "ducksoup" (p.25)

'''Antietam''' 
The first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil, in 1862. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with almost 23,000 casualties.

'''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 101==

'''Cold Harbor''' 
There were two battles of Cold Harbor: the first, in 1862, predated Antietam, so this would have been the second in 1864 0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cold_Harbor Wikipedia].

'''the Brain and its Mysteries''' 
This is a recurring theme, with suggestions of neurological symptoms already seen, such as Miles Blondell's weird feelings and Lew Basnight's malady. As seen below, the presence of the bullet has some effects on his brain: he receives "communications, from far, far away," which can be symptoms of brain injuries.

'''Minié ball''' 
Prior to the development of the minie ball, rifles were not used in combat due to the difficulty in loading. The ammunition used by rifles was the same diameter as the barrel in order for the bullet to engage the groves of the rifled barrel. As a result the ball had to be forced into the barrel. The minie ball, originally designed by Captain Claude-Etienne Minie of France and improved on by manufacturers in the United States, changed warfare. Since the minie ball was smaller than the diameter of the barrel, it could be loaded quickly by dropping the bullet down the barrel. This conical lead bullet had two or three grooves and a conical cavity in its base. The gases, formed by the burning of powder once the firearm was fired, expanded the base of the bullet so that it engaged the rifling in the barrel. Thus, rifles could be loaded quickly and yet fired accurately; 620; [http://www.civilwar.si.edu/weapons_minieball.html From the Smithsonian website]

However, Minié balls are relatively large, generally .58 caliber, so that would be a mighty large piece of lead lodged in his brain. [http://www.eclectichistorian.net/RifleMusket/Minies.html Picture]

'''"far, far away"''' 
A nod to the opening lines of ''Star Wars''? “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." 
A similar episode is in Richard Powers' "Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance" (1985), in which a character affirms that he can get military radio communications thanks to a dental filling. Richard Powers has often been compared to Pynchon.

'''physical well-being''' 
The dichotomy of bodily and spiritual well-being appears in the [[The World is at Fault]] letter that Pynchon wrote in the early 60s.

'''"if it exists"''' 
Assuming this is c1882, when the Standard Oil Trust was formed, it was already well-known.

==Page 102==
'''ten gallons of coffee''' 
Major caffeine abuse also figured in to ''Mason & Dixon''.

'''Twin Vibes''' 
Vibe and Walker work together in part because of Walker's "powers". These "vibrations" could be the source of the name Vibe.

'''With that kind of personal faith . . . handling snakes''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling Wikipedia] says snake-handling did not become a movement until the 1920s but was a sensational practice before the end of the 19th century. The requisite "personal faith" is defined in Mark 16:17-18: "And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name . . . [t]hey shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Southern Appalachia is now the epicenter of snake-handling.

'''''"Izvinite... Hvala"''''' 
'Excuse me'... 'Thank you' in Croatian. [http://www.bugeurope.com/essentials/croatian.html [cite]] Also in Serbian, though written in a different alphabet.

==Page 103==

'''por vida''' 
For life.

'''a message from perhaps farther beyond...''' 
Kit may think it another message from the Invisible. Due to his belief in Vectorism?

'''how Mr. Vibe . . . had been left free to behave''' 
The mission given to Walker is to constrain Vibe, who in some sense shares a "karma" with him.

==Page 104==

'''"Tithing," Tesla said, "giving back to the day."''' 
Tesla's contempt for this tithing positions him as—wait for it—against the day.

==Page 105==

'''Jake with me''' 
Fine with me.

'''"not here on the desolate lee shore whose back country is death"''' 
Wonderful, just wonderful...

==Page 107==

Since this is 1899, the Chums should be six years older than they were in Chicago.

'''this era of desuetude''' 
Time when usual rules and customs are not being practiced.

'''midwatch''' 
The time between midnight and 4 a.m. Another naval practice observed by the Chums.

'''A boy . . . under a baggy cap with its bill turned sidewise''' 
I can't identify this as to title or date, but the subject appeared in lithographs that hung in many homes in the first half of the 20th century.

'''Tesla device''' 
A radio. He received a patent for the radio after his death. The transmissions of July 3, 1899 (see Page 97, above) were used as evidence that he should be granted the patent.

:A member of the wiki has pointed out that Tesla recorded thunderstorm observations on that date but did not carry out transmissions.

'''voices . . . difficult to credit with any origin in the material sphere . . . hoarse whispering''' 
Messages coming from a world the Chums don't inhabit? From outside their novel, I suggest, specifically from their author, who is preparing to take over the narration again.

'''Indian Ocean islands of Amsterdam and St.Paul''' 
As noted in the text, Indian Ocean Islands. Both are volcanic in origin. They remain without permanent residents.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Saint-Paul Wikipedia article on St. Paul Island]

'''westerlies''' 
A westerly is a wind that is ''coming from'' the west, not heading toward the west. The Chums must therefore have been somewhere in Europe, Africa or Central Asia at the time.

==Page 108==

'''islets vanished from the nautical charts''' 
Do features really vanish from charts? Could it be that their ''names'' were no longer recorded?

It is possible that some small islands collapse or are eroded, and disappear below the sea, to "rejoin the Invisible".

'''St. Masque''' 
This island's name may have been one of the ones to vanish.

'''huge underground construction''' 
The description calls to mind Boston's "Big Dig," or a bunker such as those built by the SAC or other military organizations.

'''''Megaera''''' 
One of the Greek Furies. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaera [Wikipedia]]

Apparently a real shipwreck as well. [http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/book_excerpt.asp?bookid=1535 [Scroll down to St. Paul Island]]

'''four hundred of us made it''' 
The informative page linked in the preceding entry is pretty clear: 330-odd of them made it.

'''"Curious," Chick said.''' 
His register of speech is very different from what we heard in earlier episodes.

==Page 109==

'''the volcano''' 
''Not'' Krakatoa. The Chums are in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

'''antipodal to Colorado Springs''' 
Amsterdam and St. Paul are, to within a few dozen miles, exactly on the opposite side of the Earth to the Springs. Because Tesla's work there wound up early in 1900, the antipodal point could not have held much interest after that. The 1899 dating holds.

'''Chums of Chance Logistical Services''' 
In the whole series of novels this is probably the only mention of CoCLS. All the other books had instruments, weapons, etc., just appear without explanation. "Never questioned, always on time" simply because it's written (or unwritten) that way.

'''mephitically seeping volcano''' 
"Mephitic" means foul-smelling.

'''President McKinley''' 
Since McKinley was assassinated (by an anarchist) in September, 1901, this situates the episode some time between 1899 and 1901.

'''a beach so intensely sunlit as to appear almost colorless''' 
Again an excess of light takes away from the ambience rather than adding to it.

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=heart.of.a.diamond&as_brr=0 more] 

"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 

blindness seems not to be a positive with this metaphor. No light, a heart that cannot see. Diamonds = lightlessness.

'''Since his''' (Darby's) '''voice had changed''' 
In three-quarters of a century Tom Swift didn't age half a dozen years. The Chums could not have aged much before ''AtD'' opened, because they weren't very old to begin with. Now the mascotte who sang the treble parts has become an adolescent.

==Page 110==

'''The once cheery mascotte... into a distrust of authority''' 
In this section Darby Suckling looks to be the "punk" of the Chums ala Darby Crash. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Crash Wikipedia]

'''Nihilism''' 
Nihilism comes from the Latin ''nihil'', or nothing. It appears in the verb "annihilate", meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. Nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. Ivan Turgenev's ''Fathers and Sons'' (1862) popularized ''nihilism'' by his character Bazarov who preached a creed of total negation. In Russia, nihilism became identified with a loosely organized revolutionary movement (1860-1917) that rejected the authority of the state, church, and family. The movement advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge, and individual freedom as the highest goal. The movement eventually deteriorated into an ethos of subversion, destruction, and anarchy. And by the late 1870s, a nihilist was anyone associated with clandestine political groups advocating terrorism and assassination. ([http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm Nihilism]).

'''Platonic polyhedra''' 
In the Timaeus of Plato, the eponymous character claims, in what he calls his "likely story," that the cosmos was created by the gathering of triangles into regular solids which coincide with the four elements: the pyramid (fire), cube (earth), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and dodecahedron. The dodecahedron becomes associated with Æther.

'''Clarendons''' 
Clarendon is a serif typeface created in 1845 that was often used for wanted posters in the Old West. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarendon_%28typeface%29 Wikipedia entry, with a sample]

'''FUNDAMENT-SEIZING''' 
Ass-grabbing.

'''"Zumbledy bongbong," [Miles Blundell] called encouragingly, as the food flew. "Vamble, Vamble!"''' 
Miles's odd speech may be an allusion to that of the Muppets' Swedish Chef.

He may also be speaking in tongues, or simply have some sort of apraxia of speech, given these comments and those on the following page.

==Page 111==

'''unmix a failed sauce''' 
There is a folk belief, however, that mayonnaise and other egg-based sauces will separate during a thunderstorm. You can, however, re-mix sauces of this kind that have de-emulsified.

'''time is intrinsic in every recipe''' 
Not whether you bake the pie for 20 minutes or 40. What's intrinsic is that the recipe always takes you forward in time. Start with ground meat, end with a hamburger, never the other way around.

'''dog's dinner''' 
Something that is ostentatiously smart [http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/dogs-dinner.html Definition].

'''In the U.S.A., it was almost the Fourth of July''' 
''Inconvenience'' is a day ahead of the U.S., being well west of the International Date Line.

'''noteworthy episodes of military explosion . . . necessary to maintain the integrity of the American homeland''' 
Put the stress on ''military.'' Other explosions achieve different purposes.

'''Explosion without an objective . . . is politics in its purest form''' 
Set this against not only the next entry but also against Drave's aphorism "Remorse without an object is a doorway to deliverance" (p. 39).

'''Haymarket bomb . . . wonders of chemistry''' 
Cf. p. 79, "the widely admired Mexican principle of politics through chemistry."

==Page 112==

'''I wish I knew what they were arguing about''' 
Randolph's consciousness has not been raised, as we used to say in the 1970s.

'''"the nature of the skyrocket's ascent"''' 
Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this refers to ''Gravity's Rainbow.''

'''about the trajectories of your own lives''' 
Miles has divined that the Chums have adventures (the display) but also intervals when their movement is unsensed from outside: between the end of one of their novels and the beginning of the next one.

'''"Think, bloviators, think!"''' 
To bloviate means to speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner. CoC blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this, coupled with the verbose allusion to ''Gravity's Rainbow'' above, is Pynchon's message to jargony commentators of his work, presumably in academia.

Presumably, us as well

'''By the time ''Inconvenience'' was ready to take once more to the sky''' 
Another damned anticlimax. They travel halfway around the world, Logistical Services puts on a big push to supply the experimental station, and we get ''not one single word'' about any data collected or knowledge gained as a result of Tesla's experiments.

'''President McKinley . . . naked woman . . . National Bird . . . something to eat . . . one of the Platonic polyhedra . . . draped female personage''' 
It is hard to see how the final figurehead choice is a "compromise" among these candidates.

==Page 113==

'''X.O.''' 
In many militaries' units, the executive officer (XO) is the second-in-command, reporting to the commanding officer (CO).

'''"contamination by the secular"''' 
Secular can be defined as "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis." As the Chums have so far not been overtly religious, perhaps they mean secular in the spiritual sense?

Secular also means "worldly", as in, that which the Chums of Chance are literally above: 113: "That sort of bickering may be for ground people, but it is not for us."

'''Gloymbroognitz thidfusp''' 
Odd. Sounds like something from Adams' ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', but isn't. Anyone?
Famous, surreal Polish writer of the 20th Century, Gombrowitz, Wittold

'''Surabaya''' 
Today in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surabaya Wikipedia entry]

'''"Special Japanese Oyster"''' 
The pearl that comes from this oyster that facilitates communications from the Chums' Upper Hierarchy is a result of Japanese experimentation "a pearl of quite uncommon size and iridescence, seeming indeed to glow
from within" that connects with the red calcite that powers the Q-weapon, as well as Merle's and Bounce's device later in the novel. [[Q-weapon and Photography|Read on...]]

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst (1864-1941), 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).

'''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.

And the Japanese:

:Through a highly secret technical process, developed in Japan at around the same time Dr. Mikimoto was producing his first cultured pearls, portions of the original aragonite which made up the nacreous layers of the pearl had, through “induced paramorphism,” as it was known to the artful sons of Nippon, been selectively changed here and there to a different form of calcium carbonate namely, to microscopic crystals of the doubly-refracting calcite known as Iceland spar.

And remember that Baz Zaharoff, on [[ATD_892-918#Page 906|page 906]], is headed to Japan because:

:"it’s ''they'' who want to sell ''him'' something, you see. Everyone’s being ever so dark about it. The item doesn’t even have a name anyone agrees on, except for a Q in it somewhere I think. Something they came into possession of a few years ago and now have up for sale on most attractive terms, almost as if..."

More about the Q-weapon on [[ATD_1018-1039#Page 1037|p. 1037]]...

'''Iceland Spar''' 
"Spar," in mineralogy: a transparent or translucent light-colored crystalline mineral, usually readily cleaved and somewhat lustrous; e.g. Iceland spar (calcite) . . . . (paraphrased from Bates & Jackson, ''Glossary of Geology,'' 2nd ed.)

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. 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 external form or chemical composition.

And look at this too, how to make Iceland Spar animations:
[http://images.google.it/imgres?imgurl=http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/imgmay04/dwd/dwf1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artmay04/dwjpegcyc.html&h=300&w=400&sz=15&hl=it&start=12&tbnid=NQMhCqiW1apqNM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Diceland%2Bspar%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Dit]

'''divided into two separate rays, termed "ordinary" and "extraordinary" 
In the optics lab, physics students split a laser beam into two rays, which impinge on an object and are reflected onto a photographic plate, generating a hologram. The Japanese here anticipate the process, using the differently polarized rays (split by the Iceland spar) instead of laser light and replacing the plate with minute crystals in the pearl. The idea of three-dimensional holography and data storage in solid crystals would not resurface until the 1950s or 60s.

'''the limitless mischief of pearls''' 
A book's worth of superstitions exist around pearls. Pearls bring tears. The bride must wear pearls. The bride who wears pearls will be unhappy. If your pearl loses its luster, you are about to die. A pearl dissolved in wine is a poison. A pearl dissolved in wine is a love potion.

'''get up buoyancy''' 
A surface ship "gets up steam" in preparation for departure. Another naval or nautical analog.

'''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. 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.

'''pearls''' 
Probably meant to contrast the "blindness at the heart of a diamond" referred to on p. 109. Pynchon may want to call to mind ''The Scarlet Letter'', in which Pearl, the child produced by the union of the protagonist, Hester Prynne, and the Rev. Dimsdale, becomes a symbol of beauty derived from sin (there, and likely here, represented by the grain of sand around which the pearl forms).

'''Dr. Alden Vormance''' "
Vormance's surname may be meant to combine "Romance" and "worm," calling to mind the Romantic exuberance that motivated 19th century exploratory expeditions as well as the serpent of the Biblical expulsion story. 
Another Pynchonian "V" name and we know what Pynchon thinks of "Romantic exuberance". See GR, at least. And a remark in ATD [to find]. 
Alternatively, Vormance may be a conflation of the German prefix ''vor-'' (meaning "forward") with the -mancy combining form (e.g. necromancy) meaning prophecy--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:38, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''a strong presumption of Bad Taste''' 
The Chums seek to avoid this accusation just as Peter Pan tries to avert Captain Hook's taunt, "Bad form." The phrase occurs in J.M. Barrie's novel ''Peter Pan'' (''Peter and Wendy''), possibly also in the stage version, and again in the movie ''Hook.''

==Page 115==
'''(Johannes) Kepler''' 
(1571-1630), mathematician best known for his laws of planetary motion, one of the foundations of Isaac Newton's theory of gravity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler Wikipedia]

'''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''' 
The method of traverse (pun ignored) by which the Chums proceed became known as a Symmes' Hole after John Cleeves Symmes who, in 1818 circulated a pamphlet arguing for the existence of such holes in the polar regions and further volunteered to lead an expedition to said regions.

Symmes' following lecture tours were further carried forth by one J.N. Reynolds. "[Edgar Allen] Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though no one has ever been able to identify the person to whom he referred." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_allen_poe Edgar Allen Poe's] first published short story, "Ms. Found in a Bottle" (1833) took, as its premise, the existence of Symmes' Holes: theoretical holes in the polar areas which led to a hollow interior.

:Research has its charms, but so does mindless surfing. [http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/03/ This blog] presents a map of the Earth inside the Earth, complete with Shambhala. The layout unfortunately doesn't fit the ''AtD'' account, but it's quite funny.

'''the great portal . . . ''noticeably smaller''''' 
Unrelieved light is unendurable; the entry into the Earth offers shadow, but the region of shelter has shrunk. Unrelieved ultraviolet light is deadly; the "ozone layer" in the atmosphere serves as protection, but the cover has shrunk—particularly in the Antarctic—as the "ozone hole" has grown larger. A small parallel, but it forwards the theme a little.

==Page 116==

'''vatic''' 
Prophetic. [http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/10/21.html [def]]

'''this is a self-protective reflex''' 
In his mystical phase Miles proves to be a believer in [http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/ James Lovelock's "Gaia."]

'''the ship's nitro-lycopodium engines''' 
''Inconvenience'' has gone through a major refit, apparently: no more hydrogen power. Lycopodium consists of spores from a club moss, usually ''Lycopodium clavatum.'' It is a highly flammable yellowish powder. Photographers used it for flash illumination. In principle, an internal combustion engine can run on a powdered fuel, though difficulties abound in practice. The "nitro" part is a puzzle; nitromethane (called "nitro" or, in drag racing, simply "fuel") seems the most obvious reference. Do the ship's engines use a slurry of lycopodium in nitromethane? That would be a tricky fuel to handle. 
I don't think "nitro" refers to a particular, separate substance. The prefix nitro- indicates a substance whose molecules have the group NO2 attached to them. The oxygen in this group is easily released, with the result that nitro-compounds usually burn very rapidly and intensely, effectively having their own internal oxygen supply. Strictly the prefix should be applied to well defined molecular species such as nitromethane, nitrobenzene, etc, etc. However it is also used for complex biological substances treated with a nitrating agent such as nitric acid: nitrocotton (gun cotton) is a common example. Pynchon has probably invented nitro-lycopodium as a plausible though non-existent propellant, in the fashion we're accustomed to seeing with him.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 06:57, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''night-glass''' 
Telescopes and binoculars are described by their magnifying power (say 7X) and the diameter of their objective lens or "pupil" (say 35 mm). For many years 7X35 binoculars were a practical compromise for field use (army issue, etc.), but these were useless at night because they could not collect enough light. "Night" binoculars might be 7X50 or even larger. Similarly, a night-glass is a telescope with an oversized lens in front.

'''electrical sound-magnifier''' 
What would come to be called an ''amplifier'' in post-Chums times.

'''human timbres and rhythms, not speech so much as music''' 
Again the "choir" image as on [[ATD_1-25#Page_19|page 19.]]

==Page 117==

'''bolts of intense greenish light''' 
Hmm, the Chums are getting the same view of this war as America got of the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Baghdad.

'''the byzantine politics of the region''' 
Byzantine: fiendishly complicated, from ''Byzantium,'' the name of the city that would later become Constantinople and later again Istanbul.

'''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.

'''Plutonia''' 
[http://www.trussel.com/prehist/plutonia.htm "Plutonia"] is the title of a novel written by Russian geologist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Obruchev "Vladimir Obruchev"], published in 1915. According to [http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2000/cur0002.htm "here"], it's a hollow-earth story.

The "Plutonist" movement, as opposed to the "Neptunist", was quite in vogue in the late 1800s, being a theory of geography which held that the interior heat of the earth was somehow responsible for various geological processes.

'''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.

On whether this and the subterranean adventure may allude to ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' see [[Talk:ATD_97-118|Discussion]].

'''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, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Earth%27s_Core_%28novel%29 Edgar Rice Burroughs and Pelucidar], ''Star Trek'', Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth... and Jeremiah Dixon's own underground journey in M&D. Doesn't Chick Counterfly sound rather Spockian here (cf. 115, bottom)?

==Page 118==

'''a tiny circle of brightness far ahead''' 
Literally "the light at the end of the tunnel," a metaphor used repeatedly, and to no good effect, by American political leaders starting some weeks after the beginning of the Vietnam War.

'''a tricky bit of steering''' 
If you emerge at the North Pole, every way you steer is south, so ''which'' south will take you to the rendezvous?

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