Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

ATD 525-556

2007-04-11T07:28:20Z

Rgerdes: /* Page 526 */

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

==Page 525==

'''Ostend''' 
Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 521|page 521:Ostend]], a seaport in northwest Belgium. Among English-speaking tourists, Ostend (or Ostende) is best known as a ferry port. Ships have shuttled between Dover and Ostend for more than 150 years, and today's high-speed catamarans move hundreds of passengers and vehicles between these two ports in just two hours. But this thousand-year-old city is a popular beach resort with Belgians, who flock to Ostend for sun, surfing, sailing and the ''Kursaal'' (Casino). The fishing hardbor and old town draw many visitors. Ostend is the only Belgian coastal resort that is as lively in the summer as in the winter. For more and pictures [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostend Ostend].

'''Fishermen's Quai''' 
Fishermen's Quay, also called De Trap. The shrimp boats come home here from the sea in the morning. Along the quay many stands sell lots of seafoods.

'''Boulevard van Isenghem''' 
A major thoroughfare in Ostend, locally called ''Van Iseghemlaan'', extending diagonally from seafront southwest through the city.

'''street-plausible''' 
Presentable.

'''Quai de l'empereur''' 
???

'''estaminet''' 
According to the OED - A café in which smoking is allowed. Now, any small establishment selling alcoholic liquor.

'''twelve-centime''' 
one centime is the French eqivalent of one cent. A twelve-centime beer would cost 12/100 of a franc.

'''Quaternions''' 
Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 130|page 130:Quaternions]]. Quaternions are a non-communtative extension of compelx numbers (Hamilton, 1843). 

Analogy with the complex numbers (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 132|page 132:complex number]]) being represented as a sum of real and imaginary parts, a + b''i'', where ''i''² = −1, a quaternion is defined as a combination a + b''i'' + c''j'' + d''k'', where ''i''² = ''j''² = ''k''² = ''i j k'' = −1, and a, b, c, d are ''four'' explicit real numbers. The non-commutative property refers to ''i j = −j i = k; j k = −k j = i; k i = −i k = j''. (i.e. ''i j ≠ j i; j k ≠ k j; k i ≠ i k''; etc.) The using of ''i, j, k'', the imaginary numbers (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 133|page 133:imaginary number]]), led to the phrases of "the ''ijk'' lot" of page 533 and "creature of ''i-j-k''" of page 534.

'''Kellner''' 
German: waiter, barman. Use of the German word would be insulting to the Belgian barman.

'''''demi''''' 
A half-pint glass (25 centilitres, actually).

'''Lambic''' 
Pron. ''lahm-BEEK.'' Unique Belgian beer style, sour and often thin in body.

'''skimmer''' 
Straw hat ("Panama").

==Page 526==

'''biquaternion''' 
Double quaternion.

'''Barry Nebulay''' 
Pun on a term from heraldry, ''barry nebuly.'' Barry (rhymes with "starry," not "carry") refers to a shield divided into an even number of parts by horizontal lines. Nebuly signals that the lines are deformed into stylized "cloud" shapes. [http://www.rarebooks.nd.edu/digital/heraldry/partitions.html Here you can see an example.] If a British author had a character with a heraldic name, it would suggest a pseudonym.

'''University of Dublin''' 
The Alma Mater of Hamilton, the father of Quaternion. He studied, graduated and taught at Trinity College, the University of Dublin, Ireland's oldest university.

If University College, Dublin, then Joyce had graduated in 1902. 

'''Quaternioneers''' 
Quaternion believers.

'''Gibbsian Vectors''' 
Vector Analysis (or Vector Calculus) developed by Willard Gibbs (Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Professor Gibbs]]) in 1881 and 1884. It is a branch of calculus that deals with vectors and process involving vectors. It is much more easily applied to phsics and other applied sciences than Hamilton's Quaternions (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]]). 
A vector is defined by not only a magnitude but also a direction, such as a velocity vector, ''v'' is defined by ''v'' = a''i'' + b''j'' + c''k'',
where a, b, and c are the magnitudes of the velocity components in directions of ''i, j'' and ''k'' which are unit vectors, (not imaginary numbers as in Quaternion), with magnitude of 1. In three dimensional cases and ''xyz'' coordinate system is used then ''i, j, k'' are related to ''x, y, z'' directions ("''xyz'' people" of page 533); but they, in general, may be used irrespective of the notation of the coordinates.
Mathematical operations (addition, substraction, multiplication), differential operator (''curl'' — Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Curl]] and p. 536, ''Laplacian'' — Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Laplacian]] and p. 536, etc) and integral operation can be applied to vectors. It is interesting to know that one of the two multiplication operations is called cross product; for unit vectors (''i, j'', ''k'') perpendicular to each other, then, ''i × i = j × j = k × k = 0'', ''i × j = k'', ''j × i = -k'', etc. ([http://web.mit.edu/wwmath/vectorc/summary.html Vector Caculus]). 
A simple vector anyalysis example here: if ''k'', the unit vector, stands for the direction upward and g is the gravitational acceleration, then the acceleration vector, ''a'', for a projectile, is defined for downward action, (the ''i'' and ''j'' directions have zero components): 
:''a'' = -g ''k'' 
Integrating ''a'' would give the velocity vector, ''v'' 
:''v'' = -g t ''k'' 
for zero initial velocity case, and t stand for time. 
And integrating ''v'' would yield the position vector, ''h'', for the projectile 
:''h'' = -½ g t² ''k'' 
toward the sea level.

'''Quaternionists''' 
Quaternion believers, same as Quaternioneers.

'''Tasmania''' 
Tasmania is an island of the southern coast of Australia. Known for its relative isolation, it was a prison for English convicts in the 1800s

'''Having been inseparable from the rise of the electromagnetic''' 
In his 1865 work ''The Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field'', James Clerk Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism. He put forth twenty equations, with twenty unknowns, in vector form (though different in notation and form than the equations that now bear his name) that completely described all known electromagnetic phenomena. In his 1873 treatise on the subject, he expressed the equations in the mathematics of quaternions. It appears that the quaternion form of the equations remained popular even though, at the behest of his publisher, Maxwell reverted to the 1865 form in the second edition (1881)--though they remain scattered throughout. In 1892 Oliver Heaviside (On the Forces, Stresses, and Fluxes of Energy in the Electromagnetic Field. ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.'' A, Vol. 183. pp423-480), while spewing scientific vitriol at the Quaternionists, reformulated Maxwell's original 1865 equations (Heaviside chose to remove the vector potential and scalar fields from the equations; the inclusion of these terms had served as Maxwell's justification for the use of quaternions), and provided the notation still in use today. See this [http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=60 PDF] for the evolution of Maxwell's equations.

'''Hamiltonian devotees''' 
The Quaternion faction, after William Hamilton, who devised the scheme.

'''Grand Hôtel de la Nouvelle Digue''' 
There is a Hotel Digue in the Seychelles; this is a New Hotel Digue by Pynchon?

Grand Hotel of New Dyke, may be a made up hotel name.

'''anterooms of death''' 
This metaphor is sometimes applied to concentration camps. Here the lyric "feel like I'm fixin' to die" seems more apposite.

'''Belgian Art Nouveau''' 
Art Nouveau, 1890(or 80) to 1914, explores a new style in the visual arts and architecture that developed in Europe and North America at the end of the 19th century. At its height (~1907), Art Nouveau was a concerted attempt to create an international style based on decoration. It was developed by a brilliant and energetic generation of artists and desisgners, who sought to fashion an art form appropriate to the post-Industrial Revolution modern age. 
Brussels was one of the Art Nouveau centers and represented different style from the others. The jewelers there, accepted as artists rahter than craftsmen, (together with those in Paris) defined Art Nouveau in jewelery and achieved the most renown. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau Art Nouveau]).

==Page 527==

'''dossing''' 
British slang for "sleeping", "staying overnight"

'''Russian nihilists''' 
:The following four are local, Belgian, not Russian, nihilists !

'''Eugénie''' 
Female. Possibly named for Empress Eugénie (1826-1920), consort of French Emperor Napoleon III. Ultimately for St. Eugenia, 3rd-century Roman martyr whose feast is celebrated on December 25.

'''Fatou''' 
Female. A pseudonym? In view of the date of the action, certainly not named after [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatou the mathematician Fatou] (1878-1929).

'''Denis''' 
Male. Named for St. Denis or Dionysius, patron saint of Paris and of France, 3rd-century bishop of Paris, martyr, beheaded on the hill now called Montmartre. "Montjoie St. Denis!" was a warcry used by French troops in the Middle Ages. His intercession is effective against demonic possession and headache.

'''Policarpe''' 
Male. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarp Saint Polycarp] was a Christian bishop of Smyrna (now İzmir in Turkey) in the second century. He was stabbed and died a martyr after an attempt to burn him at the stake failed. His intercession is sought against earache and dysentery.

'''Young Congo''' 
Probably in reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turks Young Turks], a Turkish revolutionary movement

'''Garde Civique''' 
A part of the Belgian army. According to the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Belgium 1911 Britannica], "the mass of the garde civique does not pretend to possess military value. It is a defence against sedition and socialism."

'''French Second Bureau boys''' 
Deuxieme Bureau; French Intelligence.

'''''phalange''''' 
French: phalanx. A military (here mock-military) group ready for combat. 

It also conjures up memories of the early 19th century utopian socialist
Charles Fourier, who theorized that people should live communally in "phalanxes" of a specific number based upon their "passions." His solid ideas included equality of the sexes, but he also taught wacky things such as the moon being made of lemonade. Of particular relevance is his rejection of industrial civilization. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism]

'''"...until something had happened, something too terrible to remember..."''' 
Again this theme of an unknowable past transgression, here invoked almost as if the unknown signifies the other 'lateral' (a word which has cropped up at least a dozen times already) 'vector'.

'''the Digue''' 
French for "dyke"

'''Congo... Belgians''' 
The Belgian colonisation of the Congo was, as Conrad's ''Heart of Darkness'' makes clear, notable for its greed and brutality.

'''Leopold, King of the Belgians''' 
1835-1909, reigned 1865-1909. A man of almost Nixonian fiendishness. In the Congo he acted as sole proprietor and absolute ruler. The positive outcomes of his exploitation include ''Heart of Darkness'' and the phrase "crime against humanity."

'''co-conscious''' 
mental processes outside the main stream of consciousness but sometimes available to it — from Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary.

'''Force Publique''' 
Belgian armed forces operating in the Belgian Congo ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique Wikipedia]). "King Leopold's private army" may be a more accurate description.

'''rubber worker''' 
See above: One of the early missions of the FP was to increase rubber export quotas through forced labor and related atrocities.

==Page 528==

'''''khâgne''''' 
an informal term used by French students for Classes Préparatoires Littéraires, the two-year cycle of classes taken after the Baccalaureat (taken at age 17-18), to prepare for the entrance examination to the Ecole Normale Supeieure. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh%C3%A2gne khâgne]).

'''Reclus''' 
J. J. Élisée Reclus (1830-1905), French geographer but mainly educated in Germany. Several times he was forced to leave France because of his political views; he traveled widely in Europe, the British Isles, the United States, and South America and for many years lived in Switzerland. He was professor of comparative geography at the University of Brussels from 1895 to 1905. He had quite an extensive connection with various socialist and anarchist circles (met Bakunin while in Florence).Once he was imprisoned in Versailles in 1871 for his part in the ''Paris Commune''. In 1882 he initiated the ''Anti-marriage movement'' while in Geneva. [[http://academic.reed.edu/formosa/texts/reclusbio.html Reclus]).

'''Stirnerite''' 
Follower of Max Stirner, 19th century German philosopher and author of ''The Ego and Its Own,'' a work influential in anarchist thought. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner Wikipedia entry].

''Max Stirner'''s (1806-56) attacks on systematic philosophy, his denial of absulutes, and his rejection of abstract concepts of any kind often places him among the first philosophical nihilists. For Stirner, achieving individual freedom is the only law; and the state, which necvessarily imperils freedom, must be destroyed. Even beyond the oppression of the state, though, are the constraints imposed by others because their very existence is an obstable compromising individual freedom. Thus Stirner argues that existence is an endless "war of each against all" (1845). (taken from the paragraph about Max Stirner in [http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm#H1 Nihilism]) 
Sourcing here? Much complexity in properly understanding Stirner, who has some Pynchon-like qualities, to say the least. From the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy 
His major work:
The Ego and Its Own
Much of Stirner's prose—which is crowded with aphorisms, italicisation, and hyperbole—appears calculated to disconcert. Most striking, perhaps, is the use of word play. Rather than reach a conclusion through the conventional use of argument, Stirner often approaches a claim that he wishes to endorse by exploiting words with related etymologies or formal similarities. For example, he associates words for property (such as ‘Eigentum’) with words connoting distinctive individual characteristics (such as ‘Eigenheit’) in order to promote the claim that property is expressive of selfhood. (Stirner's account of egoistic property—see below—gives this apparently orthodox Hegelian claim a distinctive twist.)

This rejection of conventional forms of intellectual discussion is linked to Stirner's substantive views about language and rationality. His unusual style reflects a conviction that both language and rationality are human products which have come to constrain and oppress their creators. Stirner maintains that accepted meanings and traditional standards of argumentation are underpinned by a conception of truth as a privileged realm beyond individual control. As a result, individuals who accept this conception are abandoning a potential area of creative self-expression in favour of adopting a subordinate role as servants of truth. In stark contrast, Stirner insists that the only legitimate restriction on the form of our language, or on the structure of our arguments, is that they should serve our individual ends. It is the frequent failure of ordinary meanings and standard forms of argument to satisfy his interpretation of this criterion which underpins Stirner's remorselessly idiosyncratic style.

The Ego and Its Own has an intelligible, but scarcely transparent, structure. It is organised around a tripartite account of human experience, initially introduced in a description of the stages of an individual life. The first stage in this developmental narrative is the realistic one of childhood, in which children are constrained by material and natural forces such as their parents. Liberation from these external constraints is achieved with what Stirner calls the self-discovery of mind, as children find the means to outwit those forces in their own determination and cunning. The idealistic stage of youth, however, contains new internal sources of constraint, as individuals once more become enslaved, this time to the spiritual forces of conscience and reason. Only with the adulthood of egoism do individuals escape both material (external) and spiritual (internal) constraints, learning to value their personal satisfaction above all other considerations.

Stirner portrays this dialectic of individual growth as an analogue of historical development, and it is a tripartite account of the latter which structures the remainder of the book. Human history is reduced to successive epochs of realism (the ancient, or pre-Christian, world), idealism (the modern, or Christian, world), and egoism (the future world).

What about these "successive epochs" in understanding ATD?

Stirner's major work, The Ego and Its Own has been reissued in English a number of times in Pynchon's lifetime,from the 60s on. (Not that TRP could not have read it in German!)

'''''Anarcho-individualiste''''' 
i.e. he has doctrinal differernces with Stirnerism, strictly speaking; see P. 324, and "Eigenheit".

'''Leopold''' 
See p. 527.

'''going down lately''' 
Being assassaniated.

'''Sipido''' 
Jean-Baptiste Sipido (1884-1959), a Belgian socialist. Accusing the Prince of Wales of causing thousands of inocents were killed in the Boer War in South Africa, on April 5, 1900, Sipido leaped onto the foot board of the royal compartment right before the train left the North Railway Station (Gare du Nord), Brussel, and fired two (or one? as reported in ''The Manchester Guardian'', or four? as stated in the text here) shots through the window but missed everyone inside. He was arrested, tried and acquitted. The leader of the House of Commons called the acquittal a "grave and most unfortunate miscarriage of justice." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Sipido Sipido]).

'''Prince... of Wales''' 
(Maud Gonne's husband claimed to have been involved in another such plot.)

'''Hippodrome''' 
Hippodrome Wellington, a horse racing track in Ostend built in 1883. The facility hosts both harness and flat racing events. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippodrome_Wellington Hippodrome]).

'''Royal Bathing Hut... twenty francs''' 
???

'''twenty francs''' 
???

==Page 529==

'''picric family''' 
The explosive picric acid (2,4,6-trinitrophenol) and its derivatives. For picric acid, Brugère's powder and Designolle's powder, [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/PER_PIG/PICRIC_ACID_or_TRINITROPHENOL_C.html see this Britannica article.]

'''Brugère's powder''' 
See "picric family" above.

'''Designolle's''' 
See "picric family" above.

'''Monsieur Santos-Dumont''' 
Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932), a pioneer of aviation from Brasil. Check out [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont Wikipedia] to get a look at the way he was wearing his "trademark Panama hat".

'''Green Hour''' and '''''l'heure vertigineuse''''' 
Absinthe-drinking time. The liqueur is green. In French, ''l'heure verte,'' so ''vertigineuse'' (vertiginous, causing dizziness) is a pun on the word for "green."

'''Rocco and Pino''' 
Rabid Quaternionists and sudden friends of Kit Traverse.
:No, they were not mathematicians at all, let alone Quaternionists, but two "Italian naval renegades" !!

'''Whitehead works in Fiume''' 
Anticipating GR's V2 works.

''Robert Whitehead'' (1823-1905), an English engineer. He developed the first self-propelled torpedo in 1866. He attended Manchester's Mechanics Institute, worked in a shipyard in Toulon (1844), France, and as a consultant engineer in Milan (1847), Italy. Later he moved to Trieste and in 1856 became a manager of a company called ''Founderia Mettali'' (later, ''Stabilimento Tecnico di Fiume'') in Fiume producing ship steam boilers and engines which were the most advanced of that era. He also developed the first self-propelled torpedo which was very popular. Whitehead's torpedo was propelled by a compressed air engine, carried 18lbs dynamites and a self-regulating device which kept the torpedo cruising at a constant preset depth. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Whitehead Whitehead]].

''Fiume'' is now Rijeka, Croatia. Trieste is on the northwestern edge of the Istra Peninsula, Rijeka is east of it. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijeka Fiume]].

'''''Alberta''''' 
The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_yacht Wikipedia] entry on royal yachts goes back to the 17th century but doesn't include ''Alberta.'' The craft does get a mention in [http://www.bouncing-balls.com/timeline/people/nr_leopoldmorel.htm this page on Leopold and the Congo.]

'''Siluro Dirigibile a Lenta Corsa''' 
or S.L.C. "slow course torpedo", "slow-running torpedo". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_torpedo Wikipedia] Italy‘s Navy was among the first to experiment with manned torpedos. Though according to [http://web.ukonline.co.uk/chalcraft/sm/chariots.html this site] this did not happen until 1935, Italian frogmen as early as October 31, 1918 made it into the harbour of Pula with the help of a modified german torpedo and sank the former Austrian but by then since a few hours Croatian/Slovenian/Bosnian battleship SMS ''Viribus Unitis''. [http://www.geocities.com/tegetthoff66/viribus.html website]

The Wikipedia entry linked above doesn't contain the Italian word ''dirigibile'' (steerable), which sets up the torpedo as a counterpart of the dirigible ''Inconvenience.''

:I suspect there's a connection between the torpedo and "Not the usual lateener, in fact appearing to have neither sails, masts, nor oars" in Miles' reversed vision, [[ATD_243-272#Page_250|page 250.]] Needs work, though.

==Page 530==

'''exfiltrate''' 
Make a surreptitious escape (as "infiltrate" means to make a surreptitious entrance).

'''''Macchè''''' 
Italian: certainly not, not a chance. And in Pynchon's Italian is used as an all-purpose exclamation.

'''''Ehi, stu gazz', categoria''''' 
Stu gazz' is a dialect representation of ''sto cazzo'', literally meaning ''this dick here''. Normally you could translate the sense of the sentence as: ''yeah, why not, a fucking category! ''. -- blicero2 - 2007.02.22

'''''mezzogiornismo''''' 
Denigrating the Italian South. Mezzogiorno means ''midday'' in Italian but refers generally to Southern Italy.

==Page 531==

'''Bruges''' 
An exceptionally beautiful Belgian town of canals which is thus one of several towns known as the 'Venice of the north'. In the 14th cettury Burges already became an international finanacial and trading center, but
started to decline in the 15th century. In the 20th century, however, the city was dsicovered by the international tourism and the medieval heritage turned out to be a new source of wealth. A new harbor of Zeebrugge, 10 miles outside of Bruges at the North Sea coast, brought new developments and new industries to the region. For the city and its history see ([http://www.trabel.com/brugge.htm Bruges]).

'''Raoul's Atelier de la Vitesse''' 
French: Ralph's Speed Shop.

'''Ghent''' 
Belgian city, less than 30 miles southeast of Bruges, on the rail line about halfway between Ostend and Brussels. It is the fourth largest city of Belgium. It is bigger than Bruges but not as famous as a tourist attraction. But the city is a showcase of medieval Flemish wealth and commercial success. See ([http://www.trabel.com/gent.htm Ghent]).

'''Daimler six-cylinder''' 
???

'''a hundred horsepower''' 
???

'''''guaglion''''' 
italian (dialectal) = boy, young person

'''Umeki Tsurigane''' 
Umeki is typically made with some combination of the various kanji for "plum" (ume) and "tree" (ki), though one has the ki being the character for "ghost/devil" and one obscure reading that's entirely redundant, where ume is "plant" (usually read ue). There is one where ume is the kanji for "buried or embedded". Tsurigane, means a "temple bell", which can stand alone or be followed by the grass kanji to mean "bellflower" (lots of botanical stuff happening here, if that means anything; hardly the only example in ''AtD''). Given the search for Shambhala going on, "Buried Temple Bell" seems a likely translation, at least at this point; the botanical meanings could perhaps emerge later.

'''Professor Knott''' 
???

==Page 532==

'''Kimura''' 
Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Kimura]] and [[ATD_318-335#Page 318|page 318:Shunkichi Kimura]].

'''drover's sombrero''' 
Cowboy hat.

'''furoshiki''' 
??? 
Japanese all-purpose cloth. Can be worn, used as wrapping, or used as a bag.

'''taupe''' 
A brownish gray.

'''boilermakers and their helpers''' 
A shot of straight scotch followed by a beer chaser, plus other drinks.

'''Anharmonic Pencil''' 
''Pencil'' is a term commonly used in Synthetic Geometry. Straight lines incident with a plane - coplanar lines - and passing through a common point are said to be concurrent lines and the set of all such concurrent coplanar lines is called the ''pencil''. (Cf [[ATD_429-459#Page 456|page 456:Pencil]]). For a figure and a not quite precise definition see [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Pencil.html pencil]. If a, b, c and d, are four distinct coplanar lines and their double ratio λ = (abcd) = -1, then a, b, c, d are called a harmonic quadruple of lines; they are said to constitute a ''harmonic pencil''. A ''pencil'' which is not harmonic then is known as ''anharmonic pencil''. See Pencil (lines 8-9), Double Ratio λ (lines 32-35) and Harmonic Pencil (line 39) of [http://ca.geocities.com/ingsaler6/mathworld.html Mathworld].

'''''Comptes rendus''''' 
''Comptes rendus des séances hebdomadaires,'' Proceedings of the weekly sessions (of the Academy of Sciences), published from 1835, later (ca. 1935) retitled ''Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences,'' Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences. (Notice that the academy didn't see the need to specify "French." Take that, Royal Society of London!) For about a century, one of two journals so universally circulated and recognized that bibliographies nearly always cited them in nickname form: ''C.R.'' The other was ''Ber.,'' short for ''Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft,'' Reports of the German Chemical Society (from 1868).

'''De Forest''' 
Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:De Forest]].

'''Gibbs''' 
Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29:Professor Gibbs]].

'''Maxwell Equations''' 
Cf [[ATD_57-80#Page 58|page 58:Maxwell Field Equations]].

==Page 533==

'''aniline teal''' 
The wallpaper dye; aniline dyes were the products of I.G. Farben, significant in ''GR''.

'''Heavisiders''' 
Oliver Heaviside (May 18, 1850 – February 3, 1925) was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, developed techniques for applying Laplace transforms to the solution of differential equations, reformulated Maxwell's field equations in terms of electric and magnetic forces and energy flux, and independently co-formulated vector analysis. Although at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his life, Heaviside changed the face of mathematics and science for years to come.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside].

'''Grassmanniacs''' 
Nineteenth century German mathematician and linguist, essentially the inventor/discoverer of vector space. Grassmann showed that once geometry is put into the algebraic form he advocated, then the number three has no privileged role as the number of spatial dimensions; the number of possible dimensions is in fact unbounded.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann].

'''in the mood for a clambake''' 
Anachronistic Broadway show tune? If so, the clambake in ''Carousel'' turns into a brawl; the assmebled factions of mathematicians could be in the mood for either a party or a brawl, apparently.

'''Monopole de la Maison''' 
Monopole of the House, a fanciful name of a fanciful drink. 
There is, since 1898, a well known restaurant called ''Monopole Lunch & Sea Grill'' in Plattsburgh of upper New York state. ([http://www.monopole.org Monopole Restaurant]). 
Most probably, it's the Magnetic monopole being refered here. In physics, monopole is a magnet with a net magnetic charge, ie. there is only one pole instead of two (so no net magnetic charge) as always. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole Monopole]). It's existenece had been theoretically predicted by various particle theories (superstring theory, etc) but never been proved experimentally. Proving the existence of a monopole would certainly worth a Nobel Prize.

'''Idiom Neutral''' 
An invented language, like Esperanto. Idiom Neutral dictionaries first appeard in 1902. It looks like a simplified Latinate language and it grew out of Volapuk, another "auxiliary language." It was abandoned by the ''Akademi Internasional de Lingu Universal'' in 1908.

For a list of all the invented languages that linguists are keeping track of, including Klingon, try [http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/GetListOfConstructedLgs.html Eastern Michigan's Linguist List]. And don't forget to click on the link to "Browse sites devoted to constructed languages."

'''phatic''' 
Basically, small talk or chatter. Words used to convey fellow-feeling rather than to impart information.

'''''Kampf ums Dasein''''' 
German: struggle for existence.

'''Q-brother''' 
"My fellow Quaternion"?
:Fellow Quaternioneer or Fellow Quaternionist.

'''We are the Jews of mathematics, wandering out here in our diaspora--some destined for the past, others the future, even a few able to set out at unknown angles from the simple line of Time, upon journeys that no one can predict''' 
In keeping with the analogy of Judaism, those "few" people within the Quaternionists "able to set out at unknown angles" are most likely being compared to Kabbalists who claim to partake in a mystic "journey to the Throne of God through the mythological realm of the seven heavens" (Armstrong, A History of God--p. 247). Throne Mysticism in Kabbalah is explored extensively in Gravity's Rainbow.

==Page 534==

'''Poiret gown''' 
A gown designed by Paul Poiret (1879-1944), a French fashion designer based in Paris. "In the annals of fashion history, Paul Poiret is best remembered for freeing women from corsets and further liberating them through pantaloons . . . it was Poiret's remarkable innovations in the cut and construction of cloting . . . Working with fabric directly onto the body, Poiret helped to pioneer a radical approach to dressmakeing that relied more on the skills of drapery than on those of tailoring." (from [http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={0DC3D00F-4611-4F91-8DC2-CC3C1A5C48D5} MetMuseum],
New York Metropolitan Museum's Special Exhibitions, ''Poiret: King of Fashion'', May 9, 2007 to August 5, 2007). For a picture of Poiret gown see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Poiretgown.jpg Poiret Gown]. ''The New York Times'' reported on February 1, 2007 that A Poiret Gown Brings $5,500 at [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07EFDA1538F93AA15756C0A967948260 Christie's Auction] - the gown was made in 1913 when Poiret was at the height of his career. For his bio see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Poiret Poiret].

'''''green and long''''' 
Pickle, or... what?
: A green and long ''gherkin'' (a small, immature fruit of a variety of cucumber used in pickling).

==Page 535==

'''no-name wine''' 
1970s idiom for common European practice?

'''set theory''' 
Set theory deals with the properties of well-defined collections, or ''sets'', of entities - the ''elements'' or ''members'' of the set - conceived as a whole. The elements may be of a mathematical nature or non-mathematical. The set theory grew out of the German mathematician Georg Cantor's (1845-1918) study of infinite sets of real numbers.

The ''language of sets'' has become an important tool for all branches of mathematics, but is of very little relevance to the practice of mathematics in everyday life. As a source of metaphors, however, it's been quite productive; "subset," "superset," "universe," "intersection" and "Venn diagram" have found varying degrees of acceptance. Recasting Aristotle's syllogisms in set-theoretic language also makes them easier for many people to understand.

'''Hamilton . . . early genius''' 
Hamilton, according to ''Chambers Biographical Dictionary'', "at fifteen knew thirteen languages, had read Newton's ''Principia'', and commenced original investigations". At twenty-two, "while still an undergraduate, he was appointed professor of Astronomy at Dublin and Irish Astronomer-Royal"; at thirty "he was knighted".

'''Hamilton . . . in the grip of a first love''' 
??? 
Pynchon probably didn't mean Quaternion was Hamilton's first love, but its effect on him was similar to that of a first love. In 1843 at the age of 38 Hamilton invented the Quaternion, the first non-communtative algebra to be studied. He felt this would revolutionise mathematical physics, and he spent the rest of his life working on it. In 1853 he published a large volume, ''Lectures on Quaternions'', on his grand invention. The last seven years of his life, Hamilton was writing a 800-page book ''Elements of Quaternions'' modeling on Euclid's ''Elements''. The last chapter of the book was completed by his son after his death.

==Page 536==

'''Oscar Wilde''' 
Note that Wilde's Dorian Gray also undergoes a kind of bilocation.

'''Kursaal''' 
Spa. Casino ?

'''vectors''' 
For serious minds see Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 526|page 526:Gibbsian Vectors]], but let's follow Pynchon's lighter mood, here is a non-mathematical definition by Kamen (1995):
:''Many things have more than direction;''
:''The magnitude is also a question.''
:''With acceleration or force,''
:''And many more things, of course,''
:''It's vectors that make the connection.''

'''Curls''' 
Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Curl]]: curl is a vector operator that shows a vector field's rate of rotation.

'''Laplacians''' 
Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (March 23, 1749 – March 5, 1827); French mathematician and astronomer who summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five volume Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics) (1799-1825), translating the geometrical study of mechanics used by Isaac Newton to one based on calculus, known as physical mechanics.

He is also the discoverer of Laplace's equation. Although the Laplace transform is named in honor of Laplace, who used the transform in his work on probability theory, the transform was discovered originally by Leonhard Euler. The Laplace transform appears in all branches of mathematical physics — a field he took a leading role in forming. The Laplacian differential operator, much relied-upon in applied mathematics, is likewise named after him. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace].

:Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 326|page 326:Laplacian]]: Laplacian is a differential operator named after Laplace. The text here was talking about mathematical operations and operators — rates of change, rotations, partial differentials, Curls, ''Laplacians'', . . .

'''scream''' 
Scream motif.

'''beginning to appal''' 
By 1905 there had been years of outrage at conditions in the Belgian Congo, King Leopold's private fief. Conrad's ''Heart of Darkness'' had been published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899 and as a book in 1902. There were missionaries' accounts of the brutality, and newspaper reports. Leopold and his apologists published rebuttals. The Norton Critical Edition of ''Heart of Darkness'' contains an extensive collection of both.

'''baize''' 
Baize is a coarse woolen felt.

==Page 537==

'''broken symmetries''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_symmetry Broken symmetry] is a concept used widely in mathematics and physics. For a simplest explanation (good enough for the text here), this term means that an object breaks either rotational symmetry or translational sysmetry - when one can only rotate an object in certain angles or when one is able to tell if the object has been shifted sideways. For a little bit more detailed explanation see [http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/OrderParameters/BrokenSymmetry.html Identify the Broken Symmetry]; or even more [http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050708-6.htm On Broken Symmetry].

'''''sphinxe Khnopffienne''''' 
refers to the Belgian symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), famous for his painting "The Caress", in which a female sphinx erotically lures a young man. The painting can be seen in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Khnopff wikipedia entry]

'''Pléiade Lafrisée''' 

in French, "friser" means to curl or twist. "La frisée" could mean "curled." The Pleiades is a cluster of stars.

'''''Conseilleuse''''' 
Female consultant?

==Page 538==

'''retroversion matrix''' 
???

'''''Ma foi''''' 
Literally "My faith", i.e. "By my faith!", a mild exclamation of incredulity.

'''ten thousand francs''' 
???

'''piker''' 
Someone cheap or cautious, possibly named after people from PIke County, Missouri, who came to California in the 1800s, looking for work. They were poor, hence cheap.

'''what is a Quaternino?''' 
Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]] for a mathematical definition. From ''The Random House Dictionary of the English Languages'', The Unabridged Edition (1966): Quaternion is "a quantity or operator expressed as the sum of a real number and three complex numbers, equivalent to the ''quotient of two vectors''. The field of quaternions is not commutative under multiplication.".

'''Bertie ('Mad Dog') Russell''' 
Mad Dog ??? 

[http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html Bertrand Russell] (1872-1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician and social critic. Best known for his work in mathermatical logic and analytic philosophy. In late spring of 1901 he discovered the so-called [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/ Russell Paradox], "the most famous of the logical or set-theoretical paradoxes. The paradox arises within naive set theory by considering the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Such a set appears to be a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself, hence the paradox." (On-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). He won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature in "recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thouhgt".

'''Hegel... puns''' 
???

==Page 539==

'''a vector quotient''' 
The result of one vector divided by another. According to the English dictionary definition of previous page this is just a Quaternion.

'''unit vector''' 
Unit vector is a vector with magnitude of one. The unit vectors in 3-dimensional space, ''i, j, k'', associated with ''x, y, z'' directions are used in defining a general 3D vector (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 526|page 526:Gibbsian Vectors]]).

'''''square root of minus one''''' 
Imaginary number (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 132|page 133:Imaginary Number]]). The imaginary numbers ''i, j, k'' are used in defining a Quaternion (Cf [[ATD_525-556#Page 525|page 525:Quaternions]]).

''''Triangle Asana'''' 
A basic yoga pose.

[http://yoga.org.nz/postures/yoga_positions_images_page.htm Here are images of several basic poses.]

''''Quadrantal Versor Asana'''' 
A triangle pose taken that extra dimension.

'''''"Uwe moer!"''''' 
???

'''noncommutative''' 
A term typical to mathematics. A commutative equation is one that can operate in exact reverse and still yield the same results. 'Noncommutative' then suggests unidirectionality. The ability to go from point A to point B, but not from B to A.

'''reticule''' 
A woman's drawstring handbag; usually made of net or beading or brocade; also: A system of lines forming a pattern of squares at the focal plane of a telescope, used in micrometers.
[http://www.astunit.com/tutorials/glossary.htm]
:Isn't that sort of a red herring? "[P]roducing from her reticule a . . . watch" doesn't really allow of that second meaning. 
:It could be a pun, since a reticule/ handbag always shows its pattern of lines, and a watch (timepiece) is drawn from it. Remember that, e.g. railroad lines of tracks, are a sign of industrialism encroaching on the natural and the spiritual.

'''Vacheron & Constantin watch''' 
Made by a Swiss company founded in 1755. From 1819 to 1970 the name was as in the text, then the & dropped out. See the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacheron_Constantin Wikipedia entry.]

'''hunting-case''' 
For a pocket watch, a case with a hinged metal cover. More often called "hunter case" (and such a watch a "hunter").

==Page 540==

'''"haar rekening, ja?"''' 
The bill, yes? (Dutch)?

''Her'' bill, yes? I.e., give the check to the lady.

Given the presence of Chris 'Kit' Traverse here, this very much suggests a reference to Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe, Elizabethan poet, playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare. Marlowe was stabbed to death in 1593, in murky circumstances, ostensibly over a bill or 'reckoning', though he was widely believed to have been involved in some form of espionage.

'''Piet Woevre''' 
The Woëvre is a natural region of Lorraine in north-east France. It forms part of Lorraine plateau and lies largely in the department of Meuse. During World War I, there was much fighting there due to vast mineral resources that had been discovered in the Briey basin or Eastern Woevre at the end of the 19th century. "Piet" is Dutch for "rock" or "stone" and is a fairly common Dutch name, the English equivalent being Peter.

'''Force Publique''' 
The Force Publique (FP) was the official armed force for what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1885, (when the territory was known as the Congo Free State), through the period of direct Belgian rule (1908-60), until the beginning of the Second Republic in 1965. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique Wikipedia entry]

'''made him reach''' 
Possible allusion to a famous line, "When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun." From Hanns Johst's biographical play ''Schlageter''. The original line is slightly different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning," "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). It is spoken by another character in conversation with the young Schlageter. In the scene Schlageter and his wartime comrade Friedrich Thiemann are studying for a college examination, but then start disputing whether it's worthwhile doing so when the nation is not free.

The line is often misattributed to better-known Nazis and others [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst].

'''not unambiguous''' 
Ie, ambiguous.

'''''rastaquoueres''''' 
8???

'''de Decker''' 
In Dutch/Flemish, the name means "roofer." (''De'' in these names almost never means "of, from" as in French; it's nearly always the definite article.)

==Page 541==

'''''bobbejaan''''' 
Afrikaans: baboon. (Afrikaans is the language spoken by descendants of Dutch colonists in present-day South Africa. Some items identified as Dutch or Flemish in this wiki may really be Afrikaans.)

The South African song "Bobbejaan klim die berg" ("Bobbejaan climbed the hill") is the source of the stage name of Belgium's most famous country and western musician, Bobbejaan Schoepen (b. 1925). In 1943 he was suppressed by the Nazis after performing a South African song, "Mamma, 'k wil 'n man hê" ("Mama, I want a man"), which contains the line "No, Mama, I don't want a German, because I don't like pork." He founded the Bobbejaanland theme park in Belgium, where he still lives.

'''MKIV/ODC... Mark Four''' 
This would be the Mark IV Ohmic Drift Compensator ([[ATD 557-587#Page 565|Page 565]]), a key component of the Q-weapon, which "regulates how much light is allowed to enter the silvering of the mirror! Special kind of refraction! Calibrated against imaginary index! Dangerous! Of the essence!'"

'''not part of your remit''' 
Not included in your job description, instructions, authorization. "Remit" (noun) is usually a British usage.

'''''gatkruiper''''' 
Dutch/Flemish: brownnose, ass-kisser.

'''one on her wrist''' 
All the bruises reflect some refinement or artistry except this one, which may have been inflicted crudely.

'''over the day''' 
Title motif?

==Page 542==

'''trans-horizontic''' 
???

'''Edmund Whittaker''' 
Edmund Whittaker (1873-1956), an English mathematician. He is best known for his work in numerical analysis. And he contributed widely to applied mathematics, mathematical physics and the theory of special functions. He also worked on celestial mechanics and the history of applied mathermatics and physics. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._Whittaker Whittaker]).

The Sir Edmund Whittaker Memorial Prize is awarded every four years by the Edinburgh Mathematical Society to an outstanding young mathematician having a specified connection with Scotland [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Edmund_Whittaker_Memorial_Prize].

'''foaming louche''' 
???

'''cheval-glass''' 
Standing mirror in a freestanding vertical frame.

'''as if someone''' 
Sound-cancelling vs opacity-cancelling?

==Page 543==

'''monitory''' 
Warning, giving advice, by extension ominous or menacing.

'''He Who Must Come''' 
The evil-doer who must come might be Adolf Hitler. It would make sense. The implication being that Europe is precipitating into a no-return situation. Capitalism cannot but end in WW2. 
Ah, a lot more and less than capitalism going on here, especially if anyone specific like Hitler is meant.
:When French writers use this phrase (''celui qui doit venir'') they '''do''' mean the Messiah . . . although a few devout quibblers point out that the Messiah has already come. It's rather tiresome Googling the phrase; the first 83 hits definitely refer to Christ and most of them quote the first verses of Matthew 11. But there's also a Camus reference (in English, I think) down at No. 90, if anyone has a JSTOR account:
:links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0361-1299(1985)39%3A4%3C251%3ACFS%22M%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X

'''General Boulanger''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Boulanger Georges Boulanger], French military man, and War Minister in the late 19th century. He was one of those men "on a white horse" that some conservatives looked to, as he urged an attack on Germany and the end of the French Republic with a return to monarchy. He was also notorious for his harsh reprisals against workers' demonstrations. "'Boulangisme'" threatened a coup in 1889, but the general's procrastination brought the crisis to an end.

'''what death and what transfiguration''' 
Allusion to Richard Strauss' tone poem "Death and Transfiguration" (''Tod und Verklärung''), premiered in 1890.

'''''"Zeker"''''' 
Dutch: certainly.

'''''dead cert''''' 
Dead certainty, sure thing.

'''Von Schlieffen''' 
Alfred von Schlieffen was the author of a German war plan to win a two-front war against both France and Russia by quickly defeating France before Russian troops could be mobilized. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan Schlieffen Plan] included an attack on France through Belgium, disregarding its neutrality.

'''Wilhelm has offered Leopold part of France, the ancient Duchy of Burgundy''' 
[http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/fr-bg.html History of the duchy.] [http://www.freiburg-madison.de/freiburg_history/1386-1517_The%20Early%20Habsburgs.htm Map,] with portrait of Duke Charles the Rash.

'''lowlands''' 
Title of Pynchon's first published story. Here, ass?

==Page 544==

'''Place d'Armes''' 
Main square of Ostend; literally "drill field".

'''peau de soie''' 
"Skin of silk" A heavy, smooth satin with very fine ribbing; somewhat dull in sheen compared with traditional silk finishes.

'''Krafft-Ebing''' 
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, Austro-German psychiatrist and author of ''Psychopathia Sexualis'' (1886), a pioneering study of deviant sexual behavior and fetishism. Coined both ''sadism'' and ''masochism'' as terms for these respective behaviors. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Freiherr_von_Krafft-Ebing Wikipedia entry].

'''toque''' 
A chef's hat.

Pléiade is not wearing a chef's hat. Toque here refers to a lady's hat, originally of fur but here in velvet, which is rather like a flattened chef's hat in shape.

'''guipure''' 
??? Lace trim.

'''midinette''' 
??? A shopgirl or dressmakers apprentice

'''sous''' 
??? 
coins. Originally Roman gold coins, latterly any kind of coin.

Specifically small change. She is affecting modesty by claiming that a hat like hers can be had for pennies in any unpretentious shop.

'''mayonnaise''' 
Brautigan's "Trout Fishing in America" famously ends with the word mayonnaise. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0395500761&id=rbEjDovfyNMC&pg=RA2-PA111&lpg=RA2-PA111&ots=ELKl5b_6Tx&dq=mayonnaise+trout.fishing&num=100&sig=BiyXRqJXRGrMWbrBNgn8de2kpCo#PRA2-PA112,M1 GoogleBooks]

'''ovoöleaginous''' 
Another Pynchonic word combination, here denoting the two main ingredients of mayonnaise: 1) eggs, and 2) oil. It's not "fecoventilatory collision" as seen in "Vineland," but it's nice.

'''Grenache''' 
??? 
Grape commonly used in Rhone Valley wines e.g. Chateauneuf du Pape.

'''Chantilly''' 
??? 
Region north of Paris.

Here the reference is to crème chantilly otherwise known as whipped cream. Chantilly mayonnaise is made by incorporating the beaten egg whites for extra lightness.

'''attainder''' 
Legislative act declaring that a person is guilty of a crime and setting punishment without the benefit of a formal trial. The Constitution forbids the federal government (Article I, Section 9, clause 3) and the state governments (Article I, Section 10, clause 1) from passing bills of attainder.
[www.historycentral.com/Civics/B.html]

''''''Aux armes, citoyens'''''' 
''To arms, citizens'', from the French national anthem, ''La Marseillaise'' (1792). Kit confused La Mayonnaise with La Marseillaise. 
Not "Le Marseillaise," you nitwit!

'''Louis XV''' 
King of France 1715-1774 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XV].

'''Cléo de Mérode''' 
Glamorous French ballerina (1875-1966), later Follies Bergere dancer and famous beauty. Her reputed intimacy with King Leopold was only a rumor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_de_Merode]. The character Madame Leonora Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim's ''A Little Night Music'' has some features in common with her.

'''Marquise de Pompadour''' 
Mistress of Louis XV,once friend of Voltaire and a power behind official scenes.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_de_Pompadour].

==Page 545==

'''duc de Richelieu''' 
Duc de Richelieu (1696-1788), marshal of France, was a grandnephew of Cardinal Richelieu, and born in Paris. Apart from his reputation as a man of exceptionally loose morals, he attained, in spite of a defective education, distinction as a diplomatist and general. ([http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Louis_Francois_Armand_du_Plessis,_duc_de_Richelieu duc de Richelieu] and cf [[ATD_489-524#Page 490|page 490:duc de Richelieu]])

'''dubious 'victory' in 1756''' 
As part of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), duc de Richelieu (1696-1788), a Marshal of France, won a victory in the Battle of Minorca (May 20, 1756) over John Byng (1704-1757), a British Admiral. In spring of 1756 John Byng was sent with a small and undermanned fleet to relieve the British ''Port Mahon'' on the Mediterranean island of Minorca. During the battle ensued, several British ships were badly damaged by the French squadron while others, including Byng's flagship, were still out of effective firing range. Instead of engaging the enemy directly, Byng decided to keep the formation, allowing the French fleet to get away undamaged. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Minorca Battle of Minorca]).

'''the ill-fated Admiral Byng''' 
John Byng, convicted by court-martial of failure "to do his utmost" in the battle, shot in 1757. Remembered because of (1) his being the last officer of flag rank to be put to death for conduct in battle and (2) Voltaire's gag in ''Candide:'' "In this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time in order to encourage the others."

'''cantharides''' 
"Spanish fly," contact irritant sometimes ill-advisedly used as aphrodisiac.

'''Sadean''' 
Pertaining to the Marquis de Sade. The acts the chef performs on the egg and oil have the same names as acts of Sadean sex.

'''''n'est-ce pas?''''' 
Right? (Isn't that so?)

'''vetiver''' 
A grass (Vetiveria zizanioides) of tropical India, cultivated for its aromatic roots that yield an oil used in perfumery.
[www.answers.com/topic/vetiver]. So, a perfume with, llterallly, roots in India.

'''pip''' 
A beaut; in current parlance, a hottie.

'''Q.P. system''' 
Quaternion Probability, page 536.

'''Usine Régionale''' 
French: as translated in the text.

==Page 546==

'''disjunctive effects of thunderstorms''' 
Folk wisdom says a thunderstorm will cause mayonnaise to separate (oil from yolks).

'''lounge suit''' 
A lounge suit is another name for business suit consisting of a matching jacket and trousers or skirt.

'''congress shoes''' 
ankle high shoes with elastic gussets in the sides (wordweb online)

'''dripping-heads''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayonnaise To make mayonnaise,] beat together egg yolks, salt, mustard and vinegar, then drip in oil while beating to form the emulsion. If you scale the process up for industrial production, you will automate the introduction of the oil, using nozzles that release it a drop at a time—but in a large vat you can have many such nozzles.

'''''cuves d'agitation''''' 
Vat or tank in which the mayonnaise is agitated or beaten.

'''Clinique d'Urgence pour Sauvetage des Sauces''' 
French: Emergency Clinic for Salvage of Sauces.

==Page 547==

'''''Cazzo, cretino''''' 
Literally, "Dick, cretin." ''Cazzo'' is a common Italian interjectionary obscenity, especially in the south. "Cazzo, cretino," is akin to someone saying, "Well shit, dummy," or "F-ing moron!"

'''''È il cowboy!''''' 
Italian: It's the cowboy!

'''''vero?''''' 
true? real?

'''''Le bambole anarchiste, porca miseria''''' 
Italian: Anarchist babes, oh boy.

'''Oudenberg''' 
A southeast suburb of Ostende.

'''Quai de l'Entrepôt''' 
???
Warehouse Quay

'''''ragazzi''''' 
Italian: boys, guys.

==Page 548==

'''''timbres fictifs''''' 
French: fictive postage stamps. Cf "Lot 49".

'''"IIIb"''' 
As explained in the text

'''Germany might stand a better chance...''' 
That is, if the French were to push into Alsace (per Boulanger) as the Germans executed the Schlieffen Plan [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_plan] for the encirclement of Paris, it would put the French at an even greater disadvantage...as actually happened in 1914. Had the Belgians and British not delayed the Germans in Flanders, and had the French railroads not performed speedily to bring the French troops back to the Marne, World War I could have had a very different outcome...an alternate history.

'''revanchist''' 
Policies based on revenge, or a person following such policies. In General Boulanger's case, revenge against Germany for the Franco-Prussian War (that is, retaking Alsace, lost in 1871).

'''the somewhat discomposed General''' 
Having died in 1891, the General by the time of the action is certainly somewhat '''de'''composed; brief biographies do not suggest he was ''non compos mentis,'' that is, mentally discomposed.

==Page 549==

'''cackled Darby''' 
(When did he lose his innocence?)

'''a modification of any salsician metaphor toward the diminutive''' 
Salsician: pertaining to sausage. Lindsay says Suckling's penis is better compared to a wiener than a knockwurst.

'''"Why you little–and I do mean 'little'–"''' 
Another Simpsons reference?

'''dunes between Nieuport and Dunkirk''' 
???
Nieuport is a Belgian seaport about 10 miles southwest of Ostend. Dunkirk is a French port (less than 10 miles inside the French border) about 20 miles southwest of Nieuport. The latter was a site of one of the bloodest battle in World War I. The general area between Niewport and Dunkirk was the well traversed battle fields of two world wars. (Dunkirk was (in)famous for the British Army's escape from the Nazi German's assault in World War II.)

'''power-receivers''' 
Not information, energy.

==Page 550==

'''Lot's wife''' 
Angels of God led Lot and his family out of Sodom as it was being destroyed and told them not to look back at the mayhem. Lot's wife, Edith, imprudently looked back and was transfigured into a pillar of salt.

'''Italian grotto''' 
???an imitating recess or structure made to resemble a natural Italian grotto.

'''a highly developed taste, moreover, for human blood''' 
Since Pugnax developed this taste in the Carpathians, home of Castle Dracula, this seems a clear reference to Bram Stoker's novel.

'''Carpathians''' 
Major mountain range running northwest-southeast through Poland, Slovakia, western Ukraine and Romania.

'''Uhlans''' 
Uhlan regiments belonged to the light cavalry. They wore splendid uniforms (model for some U.S. marching band uniforms). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uhlan Wikipedia article.]

'''Temesvár''' 
Now Timişoara, extreme western Romania.

==Page 551==

'''...separated by only a slice of Time...''' 
Miles is beginning to experience Time almost as a spatial dimension, his personal vector as traversing (!) 4-dimensional space, or perhaps multidimensional space, the mathematics for which is being debated in Ostend.

'''securing the mess decks''' 
The Chums follow U.S. Navy idiom in orders (frequently prefixed with "Now") and shipboard activities ("secure" meaning "whatever you did before, undo it now," in this case put away the dishes and fold up the tables).

'''Ryder Thorn''' 
Tolkienesque name? Or perhaps it's a nod to the Ryder-Waite Tarot deck and to Kevin Thorn (Kevin Matthew Fertig, 1977-), the American professional wrestler better known by his ring name Kevin Thorn who is currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment wrestling on its ECW brand. He has appeared in vigniettes with Ariel (Shelly Martinez, 1980-), the tarot card reader, who spits blood at the camera while she "predicted the future of ECW." Yup, a stretch...

'''He was at Candlebrow.''' 
Presumably a 'trespasser.'

'''the four-note chord in the context of timelessness''' 
A melody is formed by notes following one another in time; a chord on the ukulele violates that practice by having all the notes sound at once. A really clever little passage.

==Page 552==

'''knuckle-duster''' 
Brass knuckles.

'''Diksmuide''' 
20 kilometers south of Ostend (about halfway to Ypres).

==Page 553==

'''The terrain was flat...lowlands''' 
Not, this time, a reference to Pynchon's ''Lowlands'', but to the two-dimensionality of Flanders, as in Edwin A. Abbott's ''Flatland'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland]; most humans, like the inhabitants of Flanders and Abbott's Flatlanders, experience life in two dimensions.

'''Somewhere up in the sky was Miles' home...''' 
Whereas Miles and the Chums of Chance, in contrast, live in three dimensions. The mathematicians gathered in Ostend are trying to calculate how to experience and use vectors to live in four dimensions; in a way, to experience Time as a kind of spatial dimension. Miles, on P. 551, is demonstrating the beginnings of an intuitive discovery of how to experience Time as an almost spatial dimension. Which would be a sort of "time travel", or at least an expanded view of life and history.

'''retted''' 
soaked in water or exposed to moisture (as flax or hemp) to facilitate the removal of the fiber from the woody tissue by partial rotting.

==Page 554==

'''Ypres and Menin''' 
Municipalities in West Flanders that were sites of some of the bloodiest battles of WWI. At the beginning of the war, the British and Belgian stand helped save Paris from encirclement by the Germans, and saved the Channel ports, but as Thorn points out, the area became the western anchor of the Western Front trench system. The several Battles of Ypres saw the first uses of poison gas (Mustard Gas, dichlorodiethylsulfide, was first called Yperite), the use of enormous mines, and the legendary mud of Passchendaele [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passchendaele].

'''Ten years from now''' 
(1914?) through 1918? and beyond?. Another paramorphic mirror--what do we now face. Whatever it is, it is nuclear.

'''Bosch''' 
Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516), Dutch painter of nightmares. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch Wikipedia entry].

'''Brueghel''' 
Pieter Brueghel the Elder(1525-1569), Flemish painter.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Brueghel_the_Elder Wikipedia entry].

'''League''' 
League of Nations? The League of Nations was formed after WWI to prevent future wars. Didn't succeed.

'''where the needles went and which way to rotate them''' 
I.e., how to push Thorn's buttons; the image is from acupuncture.

==Page 555==

'''simpletons at the fair''' 
Making Pynchon's metaphor explicit.

'''Chopin E-minor Nocturne''' 
Frédéric Chopin (1810-49), a Polish pianist and composer ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin Chopin]). He was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Polish morther and a French father. He went to Paris at the age of 20 and died there at the age of 39. He was widely regarded as one of the most famous and influential composers for the piano. From 1837-47 he had a 10-year stormy relationship with the French writer George Sand. His E-minor Nocturne is a 4-minute long Romantic style piano solo composed in 1827. (A ''nocturne'' is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturne Nocturne].)

'''owl-light''' 
???glimmering or imperfect light or twilight hours.

''''plasmic hysteresis'''' 

A coined term, apparently similar in meaning to Miles’ phrase “failure of physical translation.” Plasma would take an older meaning of “form” or “shape." Hysteresis, according to Webster's, refers to “a retardation in effect when the forces on an object are changed.” Hysteresis is used to describe magnetic phenomenon as well as plastic or elastic materials, that involve changes to a rest state that last beyond the forces that cause them. Examples include recordings on magnetic tape or a thumbprint slowly disappearing from putty. In the context of this passage, plasmic hysteresis appears to describe the lingering visage of someone who is no longer present – a hysteresis of form only and thus a failed physical translation. See [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=plasma&searchmode=none etymology of plasma] and this nifty explanation of [http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/hysteresis/WhatIsHysteresis.html hysteresis].

Hysteresis has also been used to refer to “loops” in time, certainly apropos in this case. I stumbled across an excellent example in a 1980 episode of Dr. Who, in which the eponymous Dr. is trapped in “chronic hysteresis,” an endless loop or return to a previous
point in time – very similar to the situation of Ryder Thorn. [http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_5q.htm Check it out for yourself!]

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

ATD 429-459

2007-03-06T04:55:34Z

Rgerdes: /* Page 434 */

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

==Page 431==

'''metaphorical way''' and '''lateral resurrection''' 
Cf. [[ATD_397-428#Pafe 418|page 418]], where ''metaphor'' and ''lateral'' are also used in quick succession.

'''"Turkish Corner"''' 
The ''coin turquois'' or Turkish corner was an interior decorating fad (dates???). Well-to-do householders had the English furniture removed from a space and put in low tables, divans, cushions, ceiling hangings, water pipes and so forth.

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

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

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

The [http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-38 ''Dictionary of the History of Ideas''] has a clear, readable essay on causation in history, well worth a look given that we are concerned with "determinants" and the nature of time/sequence/cause-and-effect.

==Page 432==

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

'''C.A.C.A.''' 
Caca; Spanish for "shit". The Chums have already begun to suspect the "shit", i.e. the malevolent organization that lies behind their boys' book heroics; the reader is now made aware of a large organization (see B.I.N., below) standing behind the massive airships and their crews. We all know what about the dynamics of large organizations, and the percentage of the time they spend in serving their purported purposes. Reminiscent of Van Vogt's Law: "90% of everything is shit (caca)".
:Not just Spanish; most western European languages. In German it's even pronounced the same as '''K-K''' (Kaiserlich und Königlich, see Max Khäutsch and Franz Ferdinand episodes).

'''Medicine Hat, Alberta''' 
A real city with a population about 56,000. It is located in the southeastern part of the province of Alberta, Canada.

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

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

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

'''reported as long ago as Marco Polo''' 
From Marco Polo's ''The Travels of Marco Polo'' (1298-99):
:". . . When a man is riding by night through this desert and something happens to make him loiter and lose touch with his companions . . . and afterwards he wants to rejoin them, then he hears spirit talking in such a way that they seem to be his companions. Sometimes, indeed, they even hail him by name. Often these voices make him stray from the path, so that he never finds it again. And in this way many travelers have been lost and have perished. And ometimes in the night they are conscious of a noise like the clatter of a great cavalcade of riders away from the road; and, believing that these are some of their own company, they go where they hear the noise and, when day breaks, find they are victims of an illusion and in an awkward plight. . . Yes, and even by daylight men hear these spirit voices, and often you fancy you are listening to the strains of many instruments, especially drums, and the clash of arms. . . . ." 
:(page 67, ''The Travels of Marco Polo'', The Folio Society 1968 edition.) 
For Marco Polo's bio and more see Cf. [[ATD_243-272#Page 247|page 247]] and [http://www.silk-road.com/artl/marcopolo.shtml Marco Polo and His Travels].

==Page 433==

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

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

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

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

Another suggestion of possible worlds.

'''"Euphrates" poplars''' 
One of the five classes of Poplars: ''turanga''. It's scientific name is ''populus euphratica'', a subtropical poplar found usually in Southwest Asia.

'''aryq''' 
Most likely variant of Arrack (OED): name applied in Eastern countries to any liquour of native manufacture, usually distilled coconut palm sap. - Or rather arak, the Middle Eastern equivalent of ouzo, Pernod, etc., which, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arak_%28distilled_beverage%29 according to Wikipedia,] should not be confused with southeast Asian arrack.

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

As in "Loony bin".

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

Brilliant! 
''Still at it, Suckling?'' 
''Insufferable little'' 
''Prick, I'll break your neck!''

==Page 434==

'''Eta/Nu Transformators''' 
Probably an imaginary scientific device. Eta is most likely a reference to the metric tensor of (four dimensional) Minkowski space. Nu sometimes symbolizes frequency.
:Alternate view 
:In classical electromagnetism, Eta is the wave impedance and Nu is the velocity of the wave; both are related to the material parameters of the medium the wave is traveling in. Specifically, Eta determines how a wave moves between different media (reflection, refraction, and transmission), while the velocity is related to the frequency and wavelength of the wave. Thus, the device probably allows the ships inhabitants to see while in the sand.

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

'''Deep Blavatsky''' 
Named for Madame Helena Blavatsky (Helena Petrovna Hahn), founder of the Theosophical Society [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blavatsky]. Cf. [[ATD_219-242#Page 219|page 219]].

==Page 435==

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

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

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

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

'''jewel-studded Victoria Crosses''' 
The VC is the highest medal for valo(u)r in the British military, about on a par with the Medal of Honor in the U.S. (except that it is never given posthumously). Adding jewels to the award is pure fantasy.

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

'''"appealing though they be or, shall I say, as they are"''' 
Captain Toadflax's corrects his grammatical mistake, an error that is partially obscured by the inverted construction he employs. If one straightens out his words into a more conventional form, e.g., "though they [secular pleasures] be appealing," the error is clearer: ''they'', the third person plural pronoun, requires ''are'' as a verb, i.e. ''pleasures are'' rather than ''pleasures be''. The ''OED'' lists many examples of ''be'' taking the place of ''are'' in similar contexts, but notes that this usage is either dialectal or archaic.
:Why Toadflax commits this error is less clear than what the error itself is. One possibility is that Pynchon is making an allusion to Captains Bildad and Peleg of ''Moby-Dick'', who speak in an archaic vernacular typical of New England Puritans.
::For more information, see the ''OED'', "be, v.," sub-entry, A.I.h.¶.
:'''It isn't an error!''' Toadflax first correctly uses the subjunctive, "appealing though they be"; the choice of mood says he is making a speculative statement, something like "however appealing they are imagined to be." Then he rephrases—changing the meaning of his statement—to the indicative mood, "appealing as they are," saying that the pleasures definitely, factually ''are'' appealing. The contrast of subjunctive and indicative is becoming archaic now, but it wasn't archaic or even odd coming from an educated speaker in the early 20th century.

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

==Page 436==

'''limen''' 
threshold

'''transmundane''' 
Beyond the mundane, beyond the world

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

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

More likely from ''turris'' (Latin), ''torre'' (Spanish) or similar (what's the Italian?) meaning "tower."

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 437==

'''Nernst lamps''' 
An electric lamp consisting of a short, slender rod of zirconium oxide (ceramic) in open air, heated to brilliant white incandescence by electrical current. It was developed by the German physicist and chemist Walther Nernst (1864-1941) in 1897 at Goettingen University. In 1905 he formulated the third law of thermodynamics, and in 1920 he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry. For a picture of the lamp [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nernst_lamp Nernst lamp]] and Nernst's bio [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Nernst Nernst.]]

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

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

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

'''Shiva''' 
Shiva is the formless, timeless and spaceless Supreme God in Shaivism, one of the major branches of Hinduism practiced in India. Shiva means "One who purifies everyone by the utterance of His name" or "The Pure One". The name Shiva is the Holiest of Holy names. See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva Shiva]].

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

'''Manichaeans''' 
A gnostic sect that followed the third century Persian prophet Mani (Cf [[ATD_429-459#Page 439|page 439]]). Their main theological belief was in a stark divide between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness.

Basic to Manichaeism's doctrine was the conflicting dualism between the realm of God, represented by ''light'' and by spiritual enlightenment, and the realm of Satan, symbolized by ''darkness'' and by the world of material things. To account for the existence of evil in a world created by God, Mani posited a primal struggle in which the forces of Satan separated from God; humanity, composed of matter, that which belongs to Satan, but infused with a modicum of godly light, was a product of this struggle, and was a paradigm of the eternal war between the forces of ''light'' and those of ''darkness''. Christ, the ideal, light-clad soul, could redeem for each person that portion of light God had allotted. Light and dark were seen to be commingled in our present age as good and evil, but in the last days each would return to its proper, separate realm, as they were in the beginning. The Christian notion of the Fall and of personal sin was repugnent to the Manichaeans; they felt that the soul suffered not from a weak and corrupt will but from contact with matter. Evil was a physical, not a moral thing; a person's misfortunes were miseries, not sins. (taken from ''The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001-2005, [[http://www.bartkeby.com/65/ma/Manichae.html Manichaean]].)

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

==Page 438==

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

:Let us quote more fully — '''''the light we see as well as the expanded sense of it prophesied by Maxwell, confirmed by Hertz''''' — it means the ''expanded'' understanding of the nature of the visible light (''the sense of it''). In 1865 Maxwell prophesied that, base on his field equations, "light itself is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws." (Cf [[ATD_57-80#Page 58|page 58]].) In 1877 Hertz experimentally disdcovered that light behaves exactly as an electromagnetic wave described by the Maxwell Field Equations and is part of the full electromagnetic spectrum. Therefore, Hertz comfirmed what Maxwell prdicted about the nature of light. (Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 318|page 318]].)
:Regardless how the scientific understaning of the nature of light has been expanded and changed, the Manichaean's view of light as invariant will remain, they will worship light to eternity. All other forms of matter are considered 'darkness'.
:Of course it is impossible for the Manichaens to know the dualism, light/darkness, of their theology has the reflection in the dualism of light. Light is a wave (electromagnetic wave) and simultaneously consists of particles (photons).

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

:Since Gaspereaux (and Pynchon) still talking about Manichaean, let's just talk about it. 
:Strict virtue for the Manichaean involved necessarily withdrawal from the world. The community was accordingly divided into two groups; the ''Elect'' or the "Perfects", the ''Primates Manichaeorum'', who embraced a rigourous rule, and the ''Hearers'', the ''auditores'',who led a more normal life and supported the ''Elect'' both by works and alms.

'''Mysteries''' 
''The Book of Secrets'' (or ''The Book of Mysteries''). The sacred Manichaean text by Mani. Cf [[ATD_429-459#Page 439|page 439]].

'''Graeco-Buddhist''' 
Greco-Buddhism, sometimes spelled Graeco-Buddhism, is the cultural syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 800 years in Central Asia in the area corresponding to modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, between the 4th century BCE and the 5th century CE. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism Wikipedia]

'''Italo-Islamic style(s)''' 
A result of the Islamic Conquest of Sicily and parts of southern Italy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Sicily Wikipedia on the Emirate of Sicily] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Islam_in_southern_Italy 2]

==Page 439==

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

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

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

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

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

'''Mani''' 
Mani (216-276), founder of religion Manichaeism. He was born in the province Babylon which was then under Persian rule. His family was Persian, bu this name is Aramaic. Mani had probably originally belonged to a Christian sect, now called Elkhasitts. Between the age of 12 and 24, Mani had visions where an angel told him that he would be the prophet of a last divine revelation. Aroudn AD 240, at the Persian court of King Shapur 1, Mani established his own religious philosophy. He and his followers (Manichaeans) regarded the world as irreconcilably divided into the kingdoms of light and darkness, good and evil. They practiced extreme asceticism in their struggle toward the light. At 26 he started on a long journey as the "Ambassador of Light" travelling through the Persian Empire and reaching as far as India, where he came under the influence of Buddhism. As Mani's teaching gained ground he came in opposition to the Zoroastrian priests and the Emperor Bahram 1. From 274 Mani lost the emperor's protection, and he either died in prison or was executed. His death was retold as an incident similar to the crucifixion of Jesus.

'''the Oxus''' 
The Oxus River of the Greeks. Its present-day name is the Amu Darya (or Amu river). It is the longest river in Central Asia. For more and map location see [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amu_Darya the Oxus]].

'''Jenghiz Khan''' 
Jenghiz (or Genghis) Khan (1162-1227), born as Temujin, a son of a Mongol chief. At thirteen he was called to succeed his father, and for years to struggle hard against hostile tribes. His ambition awakening with his continued success. He spent six years in subjugating the Naimans, between Lake Balkhash (in Southeastern Kazakhstan) and the Irtish (an enormous river in Western Siberia) , and in conquering Tangut, south of Gobi desert. In 1206 he started to use the name ''Jenghiz Khan'' — "Very Mighty Ruler". In 1211 he overruan the empire of North China, and in 1271 conquered and annexed the Kara-Chitai empire from Lake Balkhash to Tibet.
In 1218 he attacked the powerful empire of Kharezm, bounded by the Jazartes, Indus, Persian Gulf and Caspian, took Bokhara, Smarkand, Kharezm and other chief cities and returned home in 1225. His lieutenants continued to expand Jenghiz Khan's empire further and further. Jenghiz Khan died on August 18, 1227. He was not only a warrior and conqueror, but a skillful administrator and ruler; he not only conquered empires stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific, but organized them into states which outlasted the short span that usually measures the life of Asiatic sovereignties. (from Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 1984 edition.)

'''crystallography of the silica medium''' 
Computer-base [silicon] allusion!?
:No! The most common constituent of sand, in inland continental or non-tropical coastal settings, is silicon dioxide (''silica'') usually in the form of quartz which is very resistant to weathering.
:And computer chips are made with silicon metal, not silica.

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

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

'''Steeplechase Park''' 
???

Steeplechase Park, located at Coney Island, was an amusement park and collection of rides, funhouses and the like. As a child I used to visit in the late 50's.

'''The Book of Secrets''' 
''The Book of Secrets'', (''Safar al–Asrar''), Manichaean sacred text by Mani. It was also called ''The Book of Mysteries'', and Titus just called it simply ''Mysteries''. It was characterized as "polemical and dogmatic." In eighteen chapters it was written to refute the false doctrines of the established sects and creeds n the world, including the sect of Bardesain or Bardesan. The book evidently dealt with the esoteric life of Jesus. The nature of Soul and Body was defined. And it also described reincarnation. A portion of the book was in the form of a dialogue between Jesus and his apostles. [[http://essenes.net/new/maniwritings.html mani's writitngs]].

==Page 440==

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

'''''chong pir''''' 
Presumably Uyghur for "big lice."

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

'''''Pulex''''' 
Flea.

'''voiced interdental fricative''' 
The ''th'' sound, as in "the" or "with." (Bad example—many if not most speakers use the unvoiced sound in "with." Try "then, other, father.") Basically, the lice lisp. This could be meant to suggest that their speech contains static or noise.

'''skeleton rig''' 
The skeleton rig is a shoulder holster for carrying a concealed handgun. They were developed in the 1890s. A very nice looking one, as well as a description thereof, can be purchased at [http://www.holster-connection.com/html/ted_blocker/tb_Skeleton.html First American Ordnance website], which also just so happens to be my source for the above info.

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

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

==Page 441==

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

'''Baku''' 
Cf [[ATD_149-170#Page_168|page 168: Baku]].

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

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

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

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

'''calyx bits''' 
Bits used for taking core samples in oil exploration. Rods are screwed together to make up the "drill string," with the bit at the bottom end. The production well is drilled with a rock bit and the borehole is stabilized with a "casing string" made of pipe (tubing) a little bigger than the bit.

Presumably some kind of mining drill-related equipment. "The mining operations were unusual in that much of the mining was done through large diameter holes drilled with calyx bits." [http://www.ut.blm.gov/sanrafaelohv/explore/historicmining.htm]

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

'''''ässalamu äläykum''''' 
A muslim greeting. Translates to "Peace be with you."

'''anticline''' 
An underground rock structure with a shape resembling a ridge on the surface. Oil exploration focuses on "domes" (like salt domes, see Spindletop entry above) and anticlines, because either of these provides a volume where oil—ascending because it's lighter than rock or water—can collect to make a "pool" that can be exploited.

==Page 442==

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

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

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

'''Marco Querini''' 
An oasis named after Marco Querini? i.e. ''Oasi Marco Querini''. In January 1571, Venetians under Marco Querini defeated Turks near Famagusta, Cyprus.

'''Terrenascondite''' 
Italian: terre (pl. of terra) = lands; ascondito, as a past participle is incorrect, it shoult be "nascosto",but it is clearly related to the verb nascondere (archaic: ascondere)= to hide. Translation is undoubtedly "hidden lands".

'''Pozzo San Vito''' 
Italian: Pozzo means well; San Vito is a Saint. Well of San Vito. ''Oasi Pozzo San Vito.'' San Vito, according [http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintv07.htm to this site], died by being boiled in oil, other sources say it was lead - a hint to the subterranean resources here? Cfr. Italian: "Ballo di San Vito", that is, Saint Vitus' Dance, a syndrome having as a consequence tics or jerks. It may be an allusion to involuntary movements or disconntected behaviour(?).

'''all that incarnation and slaughter will transpire in silence''' 
Calls to mind the silent battle scene in Akira Kurosawa's samurai retelling of ''King Lear'', titled ''Ran'', which translates roughly to "chaos."

==Page 443==

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

'''Consommé Imperial''' 
A gingered chicken broth with julienne of carrots and leeks.

'''Timbales de Suprêmes de Volailles''' 
Chicken Supreme Pudding ? Um, Suprêmes de Volailles means the white meat of chicken prepared with a fortified white sauce. To make timbales, the meat is chopped and placed in individual molds, a little grated Gruyère cheese on top, and baked in a water bath (just like some puddings).

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

'''aubergines à la Sauce Mousseline''' 
Eggplants with mussel sauce. -No, the French for mussels is moules, not moussel. A Sauce Mousseline is Hollandaise lightened with a bit of whipped cream. An odd choice perhaps for eggplant, but then Sauce Piquante is more for pork or boiled beef (pot-au-feu) than lamb.

:I've never seen a dog eat eggplant, but it sounds like something one wouldn't want to miss. Only thing is, it has to be somebody else's dog.

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

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

==Page 444==

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

:No. ''Oases'' is the plural of ''oasis''. Here, ''Oasi'' is the Italian word for ''oasis''!

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

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

'''shaft-alley''' 
Somebody check this: the channel, running fore-and-aft deep in the ship's hull, where the propeller shafts are located.

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

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

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

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

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

'''Taklamakan''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan The Taklamakan] (also Taklimakan) is a desert of Central Asia, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. It is known as the largest sand-only desert in the world. Some references fancifully state that Taklamakan means "if you go in, you won't come out"; others state that it means "Desert of Death" or "Place of No Return".

==Page 445==

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

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

'''those Powers . . . still competing for it''' 
And to complete the analogy, the countries/peoples who have exercised power for centuries and are now baffled to see it flow into the hands of the powerless.

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

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

'''far wicket''' 
A 'wicket' may simply be a gate; but in the context of a novel and the bomber at Headingly cricket ground and Fenners, the Cambridge cricket ground, a 'wicket' is the three stumps at one end of a cricket pitch. ("The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly" - see p.236.)
:That isn't the context here; we are in a government building where supplicants have to pass through gates—wickets—and face bureaucrats through grilles—more wickets.

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

'''Vic removal''' 
???

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

==Page 446==

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

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

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

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

'''drill suits''' 
Drill is a durable cotton fabric; khaki drill is used for uniforms.

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

'''Hundreds of telegraphers''' 
The scene described, including the pneumatic dispatches and the ostensible concern about terrorism, is very similar to one in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil."

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

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

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

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

'''allegro vivatchy''' 
phonetic of 'allegro vivace' - a musical term for a quick tempo. If the policeman had been manhandling an English suspect, he would have said "All right then, quick march." An early instance of cultural sensitivity. . . .

==Page 447==

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

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

Gutta percha per se is a Victorian equivalent to rubber, or rather hard rubber (they knew to use soft latex for erasers, "gum boots" and such). Discovery of the vulcanization process led to replacement of gutta-percha in many applications.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 448==

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

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

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

==Page 449==

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

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

==Page 450==

'''DREAMTIME MOVY''' 
Misspelling is dreamlike? Or, more possibly, the spelling hadn't yet been standardized.
:The ''OED'' an cites an occurance of this spelling as late as 1919.

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

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

'''Powers movement''' 
Around 1897, Nicholas Power improved the "Maltese Cross" used in the Geneva movement; his company sold [http://www.victorian-cinema.net/power.htm projectors] including the "Peerless" and the popular No. 5. The Power or Power[']s movement could not be adapted to sound projection.

'''Geneva''' 
A watch movement also used in film projection. "The Geneva movement is so called because of its use in Geneva watches as a stop wind. The projection on the driving disk acts as the pawl drive, and the concave projections on the lower disc act as stop pawls. This is used at the present time in motion picture machines for moving the film in front of the lens and is known as the intermittent movement."

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

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

==Page 451==

'''nitro in the film''' 
Cellulose nitrate was the predecessor to modern photographic films. The nitrate material might be coated with collodion, which served as the substrate to the chemistry that made the image. Nitrate film was/is notoriously flammable.

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

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

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

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

'''queen-of-the-prairie''' 
[http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/68/index.html Meadowsweet,] ''Filipendula rubra,'' wild flower with clusters of pink blooms.

'''Geneva''' 
A watch movement also used for film projection. Here it is some more detail. "The Geneva movement is so called because of its use in Geneva watches as a stop wind. The projection on the driving disk acts as the pawl drive, and the concave projections on the lower disc act as stop pawls. This is used at the present time in motion picture machines for moving the film in front of the lens and is known as the intermittent movement."

==Page 452==

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

'''Sicilians with equal apprehensions for the principle of the vendetta''' 
If the vendetta began when A killed B, couldn't B's son short-circuit the whole thing by going back in time and killing A first? And then who would be responsible for killing the son? Possible application to the Traverse/Vibe/Deuce relationship, too.

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

'''between Cleveland and Denver''' 
Merle's idiosyncratic choice of endpoints? This helps define where Candlebrow is, though.

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

The phrase has a specific meaning in mathematics, referring to a generalization of periodic functions.

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

'''Lobatchevskian''' 
of Nikolai Lobachevsky (1793-1856), a Russian Mathematician, co-founder, with Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai, of non-Euclidean geometry. Born at Nizhny Novgorod and a professor at Kazan University from 1814. In 1829 he published his non-Euclidean geometry paper, the first account of that subject in print.

'''Automorphic Dispensation''' 
Self-forming, self-organizing, recurring or periodic dispensation.

'''distressing regularity''' 
Explains dilapidation?

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

The persisting storm also occurs in ''Mason & Dixon'', in at least one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels and in Walter Moers‘ [http://www.amazon.com/13-2-Lives-Captain-Bluebear/dp/1585678449/sr=1-1/qid=1170090170/ref=sr_1_1/002-4941751-7235229?ie=UTF8&s=books "13 1/2 lives of Captain Bluebear"].

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

==Page 454==

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

'''Giant Airships of 1896 and '7''' 
An early UFO sensation. From November 1896 to the summer of '97, newspapers reported numerous sightings of [http://www.balloonlife.com/publications/balloon_life/9607/airship.htm a large cigar-shaped airship]. The first reports came from Sacramento; the "ship" (or ships) moved from west to east, with [http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n03/illinois-ufo-mania-of-1897.html a big concentration in Illinois.] "Contacts" with the people on board the craft all proved to be hoaxes, and the speed of the ship's travel was a pretty good match for the speed of propagation of phony newspaper stories from town to town.

In the context of ''AtD'' we have to ask: In a world where airships were common by 1893, operated by a sizable community of aeronautics clubs like the Chums of Chance, why would another airship create a sensation in 1896? Who would consider it mysterious?

And ''were'' airships common by 1893? [http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/ss/airship_5.htm Here] is a brief history of this technology in our historical context.

[http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Mysterious-airship.jpg This artist's conception] is no less imaginative than sketches that appeared in the media in 1896-97.

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

==Page 455==

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

'''Somble, Strool, and Fleshway''' 
[[ATD_26-56#Page_34|See annotations to page 34.]]

''''paranoia querulans'... P.Q.''' 
A made-up noun to mean the psychological disease of constant questioning of one's paranoia?...It seems to mean rather a complaining paranoia (cfr. Latin "queri" = to complain).

Previously identified and paraphrased as "litigious mania" (look back a couple of words) or "litigious paranoia."

'''Hercules''' 
Allusion to Hercules Powder Company, major manufacturer of black powder and other explosives.

'''blasting agent''' 
Just a casual reference to the Hercules product. In a more technical context "blasting agents" are distinguished from "shattering explosives." A blasting agent releases its energy more slowly and produces a heaving action.

'''detonans''' 
That which is detonated - cod latin. Detonans is a present participle, roughly meaning "that detonates" or "detonating".

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

==Page 456==

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

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

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

'''machinery . . . more complicated than it needs to be''' 
Merle and Roswell, as alchemists, suspect the problem of "moving pictures" may have a solution with fewer moving parts.

'''lost mines''' 
(Factual?) One of the classic "crazy old galoot" figures in Westerns is the deranged sourdough who can't stop talking about the incredibly rich lode he and his partner found and then lost.

==Page 457==

'''tourbillon''' 
A tourbillon is a type of mechanical clock or watch escapement invented in 1795 by Abraham-Louis Breguet that is designed to counter the effects of gravity and other perturbing forces that can affect the accuracy of a chronometer. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourbillon Wikipedia]

Tourbillon is French for "whirlwind" - Thorvald‘s tiny chronometer-cousin.

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

'''patent pencils''' 
Mechanical or (British) propelling pencils. "Patent" as in patent medicine, patent leather: innovative, gimmicky, making claims of uniqueness.

Ebenezer Wood "constructed the first hexagon- and octagon-shaped pencil cases that we have today. Ebenezer did not patent his invention and shared his techniques with whoever asked." from Wikipedia.

'''zephyr gingham''' 
From [http://vintagesewing.info/1920s/26-fcm/fcm-16a.html this site]: gingham: A cotton fabric in checks or stripes nearly alike on both sides. zephyr: Anything light and airy. We have zephyr yarns, zephyr gingham, zephyr tissues.

'''lawn''' 
a thin or sheer linen or cotton fabric, either plain or printed.

'''pongee''' 
silk of a slightly uneven weave made from filaments of wild silk woven in natural tan color or its cotton imitation.

==Page 458==

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

'''Latinate token of prestige''' 
PhD (''Philosophiae Doctor''), summa cum laude, etc.

'''suspicious of night horizons''' 
(sunsets?)Absence of light horizons? You can't see the horizon at night unless ''something'' is flashing and flaring over beyond it. Townsfolk are traditionally suspicious of strange flickerings in the sky. Fireworks specialists give you a way out: "Oh, Luigi was just trying out a new star shell."

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

'''Minkowski''' 
Hermann Minkowski was a German mathematician who made useful contributions in the development of relativity, amongst other things. Cf [[ATD_318-335#Page 324|page 324]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowski]

'''Three times ten... minus one seconds''' 
Three times ten to the fifth refers to the speed of light. The square root of minus 1 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_unit Wikipedia] is also known as the Imaginary Unit or i. i is sometimes also expressed as the square root of -1, as here. Complex numbers [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_number Wikipedia] can be expressed as a + bi where a is the real part of the complex number and b is the imaginary part. Complex numbers were an important element of the work of both Minkowski and Einstein. Also, for imaginary number Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 133|page 133]] and complex number Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 132|page 132]].

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

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

'''he called the equation "pregnant"''' 
Minkowski used the German word ''prägnant,'' which doesn't mean "pregnant." It means concise, precise, penetrating.

'''astronomical distance''' 
Small-scale astronomy then: 3x105 km is about two-thirds of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

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