Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

ATD 792-820

2007-02-28T19:51:49Z

Wardoll: /* Page 805 */

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

==Page XX==

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

==Page 792==

'''drumfire''' 
Intense, continuous artillery fire, characteristic of the bombardments that preceded the attempted advances on the Western Front in World War I.

==Page 794==

'''communicate with the explorer Peary, then in the Arctic'''
Robert Peary did not even leave New York City at the start of his polar expedition until July 6, 1908, 6 days '''after''' the Tunguska Event of 6-30-08, and did not reach Ellesmere Island until the summer of 1909(see[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_Event] section on Wardenclyffe Tower).
: But this was one of the 'theories' around the time and long after attempting to explain the Tunguska Event. See Tunguska Event in Wikipedia.

'''Tom Swift''' 
Tom Swift is a fictional character in youths' books. He is an inventor of ingenious machines that take him and his chums on adventures, usually by air.
Not published until 1910.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift Wiki]

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

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

==Page 795==

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

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

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

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

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

==Page 796==

'''By dusk . . . running-lights''' 
An enigma. The ordinary way of analyzing it: Make a model, say a flashlight, an orange and a toothpick mooring line with a raisin balloon at the top. As the orange rotates toward the east and the flashlight appears to set in the [http://www.example.com link title]west, what gets dark first? The base of the toothpick, the shadow progressing upward. But the text says the raisin does, the shadow arc moving downward.

It's very curious that immediately following this apparently topsy-turvy paragraph Miles says "As above, so below." Significant?

Are the Chums watching from above?..."as the boys watched"..."as above,so below."?--[User: MKohut] January 28, 2007

:I suggest there's no error, and the "ordinary way" is not the right way to understand the text. It definitely is worth looking for a way that the narration--and Miles' benediction--can be technically as well as thematically correct. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 14:27, 28 January 2007 (PST)

In wizardry (developed from shamanry) Hermes Trismegistus wrote an
Emerald Tablet on which he wrote his wisdom (9-14 precepts).
Sir Isaac Newton translated one precept as:
"That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below."

So, magic?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Tablet Wiki]

--[[User:mrplong]] 13:36, 31 January 2007 (AST)

The precept has been linked to numerology [http://home.online.no/~luneng/999.html]; These words circulate throughout occult and magical circles, and they come from Hermetic texts. The concept was first laid out in The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, in the words "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing."[24]

In accordance with the various levels of reality: physical, mental, and spiritual, this relates that what happens on any level happens on every other. This is however more often used in the sense of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm is oneself, and the macrocosm is the universe. The macrocosm is as the microcosm, and vice versa; within each lies the other, and through understanding one (usually the microcosm) you can understand the other.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism#_note-10]. Card I of the Major Arcana of the Waite Tarot Deck (alluded to throughout AtD) shows The Magician, simultaneously pointing up toward the sky and down toward the earth.

'''Slowly as God's justice''' 
Must be noted given title and everything religious in ATD.

==Page 797==

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

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

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

'''the equations of history''' 
Perhaps an allusion to Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation Trilogy'', in which the Psychohistorian Harry Selden calculates equations of history. His equations are (seemingly) thrown off by the advent of a mutant with unusual powers that his predictive equations do not take into account--not unlike the advent of the Tunguska Event.

'''Tchernobyl, the star of Revelation''' 
city in Ukraine where a nuclear meltdown occurred linked to Book of Revelation.

'''something that had not quite happened yet''' 
In short, an Omen. The Tunguska Event could be seen as an omen of the destructive forces unleashed over the entire course of the 20th Century.

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

'''teppisti''' 
Italian: hooligans, hoodlums, thugs

==Page 798==

'''''mala vita''''' 
Italian: evil life. With more specific reference to Mafia style criminal organizations like the Malavita del Brenta of Venice. There is also a genre of songs glorifying Mafia life called canto di Malavita.

'''brides picotees''' 
French: tickle straps

==Page 799==

'''"Bevis Moistleigh"''' 
Bevis Mostly? Bevis Wetly?
Cf. Sir Bevis from Lang's Red Romance Book around this time. or a Twilight Zone story, Bevis 1960. See Wikipedia. 
Or, see later in ATD, Bevis is an allusion to Beavis & Butthead. [Idiot]

Possibly, given what follows, an allusion to the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, oldest extant Jewish house of worship in Britain [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevis_Marks_Synagogue], but more likely a reference to (p.800)''Bevis,the Story of a Boy.''

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

'''gematria''' 
As described in the text, each letter of teh Hebrew alphabet is also a number. In the simplest form of Gematria, words, phrases and sentences with eqivalent numerical value are somehow linked, in a way promoting exegesis of Torah and Midrash (Torah commentary). More complex, mystical gematria systems are described in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria].

==Page 800==

'''''fatkeqëse''''' 
Albanian: translated in the text as "disaster." Is this correct?

'''gongs''' 
Medals.

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

'''''Bevis . . . the Story of a Boy''''' 
Theign taunts Bevis with the title of a popular novel, ''Bevis: the Story of a Boy'' (1882), by Richard Jefferies. From bits and pieces of the work quoted online (the book is apparently still in print), the narrative style and dialog writing appear similar to what we've seen in the early Chums passages. What's more, themes associated with this and other books by Jefferies (e.g., the beauty of the untouched countryside) align with some of the ''AtD'' themes. Jefferies also published a "post-Apocalypse" novel called ''After London.'' The Jefferies-Pynchon link may merit a closer look. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 09:58, 30 January 2007 (PST)

==Page 801==

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

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

'''"an emigration of reason itself".......Crusade"''' 
Notice war talk and natural destruction around the Event.

==Page 802==

'''croakers''' 
Slang: doctors, especially quacks.

Also: One who croaks, murmurs, grumbles, or complains
unreasonably; one who habitually forebodes evil.

"Croaker" is a long-established (slang) word for "doctor," and in this passage it is quite clear that the doctors (performing curative activities to earn their fees but not really curing anything) feel they are putting one over on everybody else.

Some online citations: 
:http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=19757 
:http://www.whysanity.net/monos/requiem.html 
:http://cancer.iu.edu/news/research/archives/2000/06.pdf ("In the Spotlight," 2nd graf) 
:http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/hardboiled-slang.htm 
:http://www.hobonickels.org/alpert04.htm 
:http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcnewman/definition.html 
:In short, it wasn't the complainers who "thought they were putting one over," it was the quacks who administered expensive treatments for all ills.

:Slang, sic. I see. Another possible multiple TRP meaning, the complaining doctors, esp. quack "shrinks", relatively new at the time?

'''radioactive mud-bath slime''' 
Treatment with naturally radioactive waters from hot springs was thought to cure many ailments. An example of a radioactive hot spring resort in Austria is Badgastein.

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

==Page 803==

'''midinettes''' 
salesgirls (of Paris).

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

'''Gabika''' 
"Cute" double diminutive for the Hungarian male name Gábor (Gabriel) and also, more commonly, for the female name Gabriella. The ambiguity (also his looks) fits finely the subversion of gender roles in his relationship to Noellyn Fanshawe.

==Page 804==

'''eleven''' 
Vienna is 86 degrees west of the Event, more or less. Converting longitude to time at 15 degrees = 1 hour, we get a time difference of 5 hours 44 minutes. At 7:17 a.m. Event time, it was 1:33 a.m. in Vienna. Now, at 11:00 p.m. the same day, Vienna time, it is 21 hours and 27 minutes after the event. The atmospheric effect has propagated west (possibly against the high-level winds?) from Siberia to Central Europe in quite a short time. All these numbers are rough!

==Page 805==

'''prepare them against the day''' 
Here the phrase means "in anticipation of" or "to be ready for." 
And more. Thematic.
Given what has been said about the Tunguska Event, colored by accounts of the atmospheric effects of the Krakatoa eruption,highly suggestive of Judgment Day.

'''against the day''' 
I shoulda been keepin' notes, dammit! I am sure that regularly through the book I have been spotting deliberate sentences ending with "... ''something'' the day"...but not, until now, with "''against'' the day". And a few score pages ago I'm sure there was a sentence what ended w' "...against the night...", then Tunguska happens, and we now need to be wary o'the day..?

==Page 806==

'''Toward the end of October all Hell broke loose...annex Bosnia''' 
The Bosnian Crisis began with the fear on the part of Austria-Hungary of possible reverses of Turkish concessions since the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 by the newly-resurgent Young Turk movement. The answer to this was annexation of Bosnia, which it had ruled as a colony since 1878. Knowing such a move would be opposed by Serbia, in turn supported by Russia, the Austrians offered to support the right of Russia to move warships through the Bosporus, and to support a declaration of independence from Turkey by Bulgaria. This provoked a general crisis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Crisis] from which Serbia had to back down, lacking Russian support. All had been settled in secret meetings in the months before; the Bulgarian (Glagolitic) traffic intercepted by Bevis Moistleigh, above, is thus explained. So is the sense of Grand Conspiracy; all the Great Powers were eventuallly involved.

'''coconut-shy''' 
A coconut shy (or coconut shie) is a traditional game frequently found as a sidestall at funfairs and fêtes. The game consists of throwing wooden balls at a row of coconuts balanced on posts. Typically a player buys three balls and wins each coconut successfully dislodged. In some cases other prizes may be won instead of the coconuts.
The origins of the game are unclear, although the term is first listed in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1903.
The word 'shy' in this context is a colloquial English term, meaning 'to throw' or toss. Wikipedia.

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

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

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

'''Decisions of the utmost gravity''' 
that lead to Gravity's rainbows'''

==Page 807==

'''Major B. F. Vumb''' 
Major Bum Fuck Vumb, as in Dumb? Another Pynchonian V-name
with the usual associations.

'''''Judensau''''' 
German: Jewish pig.

'''Christian Socialists . . . Dr. Karl Lueger''' 
Lueger (pronounced in three syllables, LOO eh ger) was a Viennese politician and founder of the anti-Semitic Christian Social Party.

'''Reichsrath''' 
Austrian parliament.

'''''Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich''''' 
German: as translated in text.

'''''der schöne'' Karl''' 
German: fine Karl. Deeply sarcastic.

==Page 808==

'''"Well actually..."''' 
Shanghai, which because of its international status did not require a passport or visa for entry, would become a refuge for Jews made stateless by Nazi Germany or were otherwise refugees in the 1930s. Many tens of thousands were able to reach it, and survived the war and the Holocaust under Japanese occupation. Large numbers reached it using so-called Sugihara Passports, letters of transit issued by the Japanese vice-consul to Lithuania in 1940, with the connivance of Dutch diplomats[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugihara]. Obviously an anachronism, but actually...this is about portents and other bends in Time, perhaps things that echo up and down the Timelines (ours and alternates).

'''Elefant Hotel''' 
The only listed Elefant Hotel in Austria, a building described as "ancient", is in Salzburg, not Graz; it is currently a Best Western. There is also a Hotel Elefant in Prague, once part ot the Empire; perhaps there was a chain?

'''...common Anglo-Habsburg interests...''' 
All the Great Powers found ways to benefit from the Bosnian Crisis, perhaps explaining Theign providing Italian naval decodes to the Austrians. Or, as Latewood accuses below, he is a double agent; McHugh is at least suspicious here. Either way, sending Latewood and Moistleigh on a suicide mission to Bosnia is one way to cover his tracks.

'''Murgasse''' 
Street in Graz. The Murgasse was first mentioned in a document from 1346. The part of town to the south was occupied by the farmers.
Murgasse
8490 Bad Radkersburg, Austria

==Page 809==

'''Novi Pazar''' 
Novi Pazar also figures briefly in ''GR'' (P.14-15, Viking eds.): "...on this obscure sanjak had once hinged the entire fate of Europe" The Novi Pazar desk is manned by Lord Blatherard Osmo. The crisis passed, but Lord Osmo has an adenoid, and this mucoid "lymphatic monster", now independently alive in 1939, is confronted by an agent of The Firm (an outfit very like its temporal predecessor the T.W.I.T. in its interests in the paranormal) , one "Pirate" Prentice; it is "now as big as St Paul's and growing by the hour" threatening all London, but confined successfully--leading to Lord Osmo's neglect of Novi Pazar...A bizarre satiric experience of Crisis Management by Great Power foreign ministries, and the literally sticky mess they created.

'''the vile Aerenthal''' 
Aloys (or Alois) von Aerenthal (1854-1912), Austrian foreign minister who engineered the annexation of Bosnia in 1908.

'''in three-quarter time''' 
Two plausible references: events driven by Vienna, the world's waltz capital, and a dark comic song recorded by the Kingston Trio in the 1960s: "Merry Minuet." In 3/4 time, it includes lyrics commenting on ethnic hatred, irredentism and inevitable nuclear catastrophe.

One could also add Ravel's ''La Valse''.

Note the chain-like sliding/closing/turning step sequence in Viennese Waltz, and also the rhythm itself represented by the repeated dactyl "and so on, and so on".

In fact, the sequence of events described here as a possibility in 1908 were realized in 1914, when Russia, in the crisis provoked by a Serbian youth group's assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, this time backed Serbia, resulting in the cascade of troop mobilizations that became World War I.

'''Isvolsky''' 
A.P. Izvolsky (Izvolski, Izvolskii) (1856-1919), Russian foreign minister who traded Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria in exchange for Austria's help in opening the Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian ships. Pynchon's spelling may well be from a contemporary source; consistent transliteration is a more recent fetish.

'''Grey''' 
Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933), British Foreign Secretary 1905-16.

==Page 810==

'''It's like having the lights brought up for a bit...''' 
As the crisis wound down to war in 1914, Sir Edward Grey (still Foreign Minister) is famously quoted as having said, "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Grey,_1st_Viscount_Grey_of_Fallodon]

'''Vlado Clissan''' 
His name comes from his hometown of Clissa, but this is the Italian name of the place. In Serbo-Croatian it is ''Klis.'' A pseudonym?

'''Blutwurst Special''' 
German: blood sausage.

==Page 811==

'''"iron convergences and receding signal-lamps"''' 
our 'free choices' in...life; so ironic at this point.

Kurt Vonnegut, in ''Slaughterhouse Five'', described the human point of view as from consciousness strapped to a railroad car, forever facing only backward; from this vantage, history looks single and inevitable, whereas in reality the train of history is moving over unknown numbers of (from this perspective unseen) switch points, the settings of which are in fact changeable (the more complex view being taken by an extraterrestrial species, the Tralfamadorians, who can see forward to the many possibilities), alternate histories possible at every switch. The character Pointsman in ''GR'' in some ways embodies these possibilities.

'''Slavonian''' 
Today the name applies to the eastern part of Croatia, but a map will confirm that the route passes through the Slovenian plain. Writers before the World War must have had difficulty keeping Slovenia, Slovakia and Slavonia straight, especially since all were inhabited by Slavonic peoples.

'''Austrian double''' 
Latewood, in light of Theign's treatment of Yashmeen, and the apparent passing of Italian naval decrypts to Austria, accuses Theign of being an Austrain double agent.

==Page 812==

'''Mestre Bridge''' 
Mestre is a town in Veneto, northern Italy, a frazione of the comune of Venice. Located on the mainland,the city is connected to Venice by a large rail and road bridge, called Ponte della Libertà (Freedom Bridge).

==Page 813==

'''And England's far, and honour a name''' 
Cyprian quoting from the 1897 poem "Vitaï Lampada" ("They Pass the Torch") by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938), previously quoted on page 236.

'''"honour"''' 
Cf. Falstaff on.

==Page 814==

'''Lateeners''' 
A lateener is a boat with a lateen sail: a triangular sail with one edge tied to a long spar, which is supported in the middle on a mast.

'''''Strichmädchen''''' 
German: streetwalker.

'''LLoyd Austriaco''' 
A ship line. Lloyd Triestino was formed in 1919 as the successor to Lloyd Austriaco following the incorporation of Trieste into the Kingdom of Italy on January 3rd 1919.

==Page 815==

'''"Nimrod" . . . from Elgar's ''Enigma Variations''''' 
"Nimrod" is the ninth section of this major 1899 work by English composer Edward Elgar (1857-1934). Like the other 13 sections, it characterizes a family friend; this one is A. J. Jaeger (whose name means "hunter" in German, hence "Nimrod," the name of a hunter mentioned in the Bible). [http://www.elgar.org/3enigma.htm Here is a very good description of the work and "Nimrod" in particular.]

The "Nimrod" variation is perhaps the most poignant of the piece; it rises to a cresendo and slowly, sadly, fades; an anthem for the fading of the 19th century.

'''"La Gazza Ladra"''' 
Overture by Rossini to an opera whose title means "The Thieving Magpie." It is as bright and impersonal as "Nimrod" is serious and sentimental.

'''"The Volga Boatmen" . . . "Auld Lang Syne"''' 
The puzzle in the "Enigma" Variations is this: Variations are based on a theme, but Elgar never states the theme; what is the melody? These are two of the popular guesses.

'''Δt''' 
Mathematical symbol used for a finite length of time.

In addition, Pynchon is very concerned with dt,(little delta-t) the time differential, an infinitesimal change in time; to quote Pynchon from ''Lot 49'' (Lippincott, 1965 p.129): "a vanishingly small instant in which change had to be confronted at last for what it was, where it could no longer disguise itself as something innocuous like an average rate; where the velocity dwelled in the projectile though the projectile be frozen in midflight, where death dwelled in the cell though the cell be looked in on at its most quick." But, the paragraph goes on, "dt" also suggests DTs, Delirium Tremens (alcohol withdrawal) a state giving access to hallucinatory experiences, "spectra beyond the known Sun, music made purely of Antarctic loneliness and fright." Which is the general mood in the wake of the Tunguska Event and the Bosnian Crisis, or should be, if the characters were not so dutifully repressing it. (In ''Lot 49'' the realization of the dt/DTs connection has to do with Oedipa Maas' realization of the finality of death, and what inaccessible realms of experience are lost with each individual's death).

:Are you confusing Δ''t'', symbolizing a finite duration, with ''dt,'' a duration shrunk to an infinitesimal?(Possibly--my physics/calculus may be rusting. The connection may still hold; note emendation above--thanks. Edit further if necessary!).

'''co-conscious with the everyday''' 
again. Linked to creativity here.

'''Ramanujan's Formula''' 
an elegant hyperbolic summation, Ramanujan's formula for the Riemann zeta function evaluated at the odd positive integers. Ramanujan didn't come to the attention of Western mathematicians until he wrote to Hardy in late 1912 - early 1913 and travelled to Cambridge in 1914. Is Yashmeen prescient?

==Page 816==

'''''dolce far niente''''' 
Italian: sweet doing-nothing.

'''divided second''' 
A dt.

'''of his entry''' 
Vlado the Impaler?

'''the Karst''' 
Generic "karst topography" takes its name from this area of Slovenia and Italy (locally called ''kras'' and ''carso''). The terrain features limestone with fissures and cavities eroded by water. Caves as well as underground streams and lakes are common.

'''Illyria''' 
The Roman province in which modern Trieste is located.

==Page 817==

'''quiet spaces between trams, unpredictable, even, she imagined, mathematically so''' 
Two familiar "rhythms" have this quality of chaotic intervals: the beating of the human heart and the sound of water dripping from a faucet. The second part of the phrase is subtle: the time of the next drip can't be mathematically predicted (to arbitrary accuracy), but it is possible to describe in mathematical terms the '''way''' in which it's unpredictable.

'''never farther than half a block from the counter-soporific fluid''' 
Perhaps an allusion or parallel to the 21st century ubiquity of Starbucks.

'''''Svr šavam!''''' 
Croatian/Serbian: I'm finishing. Also, implausibly, written ''Svršavam.''

'''Velebit''' 
A ridge that runs parallel to the Croatian Adriatic coast a few tens of miles south of Trieste. Lying a short distance inland, it is made up of limestone karst.

==Page 818==

'''persisted from day to day''' 
The image again of the storm that retains its identity over a long time.

'''Stationary waves''' 
Crests and troughs that don't move. Seen more often where water is flowing (up/downstream of rocks in rapids), but also where waves coming onshore interact with those reflected from the shore.

'''Uskok''' 
Serbian/Croatian: fugitive. Writers even in antiquity noted that piracy was a main economic activity along this coast.

In all, Vlado seems very like the Traverse brothers, set against the modern world, or anyway modern power arrangements, a bit of an anarchist in his own way. But his grievances have historic depth and resonance, more of what Pynchon in ''V.'' called "Temporal Bandwidth".

'''Clissa''' 
Town from which Vlado Clissan takes his ''nom de guerre.'' Locally called Klis.

==Page 819==

==Page 820==

'''''John of Asia''''' 
John of Asia, also called John of Ephesus, was a 6th-century church leader and historian. The ruins of Ephesus are located in western Asia Minor, now in Turkey.

'''coastline approaching infinite length''' 
Another reference to the "crisis" in mathematics. The closer you look at the coastline, the longer it gets. If you could view it from infinitely close up, it would become infinitely long. This is a specific reference to Fractal Geometry (another fractal reference self-similarity over scale occurs on [[ATD_557-587#Page_575|page 575]]) Benoit Mandelbrot, in ''Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension'' discusses the infinite coastline of Britain: "We will see that...the final estimated length is not only extremely large but in fact so large that it is best considered infinite."). The Euclidean view of the coastline's length would be akin to simply measuring off the distance around the island. The fractal view suggests however, that the coastline is far from straight. The fact that a coastline is usually rugged with twists and turns both small and large leads us to conclude that the actual length of the coastline is much larger than the straight-line distance. The more we examine the twists and turns, the more we realize that they are smaller and smaller copies of the larger original, making their way deeper and deeper into the coastline itself. Depending upon how small a yardstick we choose to measure the coastline, the numeric outcome becomes larger. The final length of our measured coastline becomes bigger and bigger as the essence of what we measure becomes smaller and smaller, i.e., the estimated length continues to increase as the ruler length decreases.

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

ATD 273-295

2006-12-27T22:11:32Z

Wardoll:

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

==Page 273==

'''the electric''' 
The Denver Tramway Company, beginning in 1886, operated electric railcars between central Denver and outlying communities. [http://www.denvergov.org/AboutDenver/history_narrative_3.asp Citation]

==Page 274==

'''Arapahoe''' 
Since Frank is at the moment in Denver, "on Arapahoe" would mean on Arapahoe Street. From the native tribe. Also a county in eastern CO and a scattering of places in US.

'''drygulched''' 
Ambushed, betrayed.

'''after Repeal in '93''' 
Refers to the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which required the U.S. government to purchase an additional 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion every month with notes that could be redeemed for either silver or gold. Repealed by Congress after the Panic of 1893 to prevent depletion of the country's gold reserves. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Silver_Purchase_Act Wikipedia entry].

'''Lake County''' 
Colorado county of which Leadville is the county seat.

'''Haw Tabor''' 
Horace Tabor, a prospector, businessman, politician, and one of the wealthiest men in Colorado in the 19th Century. Tabor moved to Denver in 1859, later settling in Leadville in 1877. With the wealth he accumulated from his silver mine, Tabor established newspapers, a bank, and an opera house in Leadville (which still stands), and the Tabor Grand Opera House and the Tabor Block in Denver. In 1878, Tabor was elected Lieutenant Governor of Colorado and served in that post until January 1884. He served as U.S. Senator from Colorado for two months in 1883. Tabor ran unsuccessfully for Colorado governor in 1884, 1886, and 1888. In 1893, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act devastated Tabor's fortune and his far-flung holdings were sold off. He died from appendicitis in 1899, and his legend still persists in Colorado.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Tabor Wikipedia entry].

'''Matchless''' 
The Matchless Mine in Leadville, formerly owned by Horace Tabor. Oscar Wilde visited the Matchless in 1882. The "widow" is Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt Doe, a/k/a "Baby Doe" Tabor, Horace Tabor's second wife (and his mistress before he married her in 1883). Baby Doe and her stubborn retention of the Matchless Mine is another Colorado legend. When Horace Tabor fell ill with appendicitis in 1899, his final request of Baby Doe was that she "hold onto the Matchless." This she did, with tragic results. After living in a shack beside the mine for 36 years, she froze to death one night in March 1935 after she ran out of firewood. Her body was found frozen with her arms crossed peacefully across her chest. After her death, 17 iron trunks that had been placed in storage in Denver were opened, as well as several gunny sacks and four trunks that had been left at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Leadville. All that was left from the Tabor fortune were several bolts of unique, untouched and exquisite cloth, several pieces of china, a tea service and some jewelry, including a diamond and sapphire ring. Baby Doe's story has inspired numerous works, including a movie and an opera by Douglas Moore, ''The Ballad of Baby Doe.'' More on Baby Doe Tabor, including pictures of the Matchless and the shack she lived and died in, can be found at these links: [http://www.babydoetabor.com/ Baby Doe Tabor.com]; [http://www.babydoe.org/index.php BabyDoe.org]

'''Zinc Rush''' 
Leadville had "rushes" on gold, silver, molybdenim, zinc...

'''some bright engineer''' 
???

==Page 275==

'''Molly-be-damned''' 
Molybdenum, which is still mined outside of Leadville.

'''Wren Provenance''' 
???

'''heaps''' 
pic?

'''Sons of Heaven section''' 
???

==Page 276==

'''Jennie Rogers's House of Mirrors''' 
Jennie Rogers (1843-1909) was a notorious Denver madam who built the "House of Mirrors" at 1946 Market Street in Denver in 1889 and ran it until her death in 1909. The House of Mirrors embodies the Romanesque architecture of the era, and was specifically designed as a bordello. It was later taken over by the even more notorious Mattie Silks (1846-1929), who operated it until 1915, when it fell victim to so-called "reformers." The House of Mirrors still stands, and today operates as a bar and restauant. (This contributor has been drinking there many times.) More on its history, including pictures, and on the history of Denver's Market Street red-light district, can be found at [http://www.mattieshouseofmirrors.com/index.html this website].

'''dress cavalry helmet''' 
pic?

==Page 277==

'''Aztlán''' 
???

'''thirteenth century''' 
???

'''images of creatures''' 
pic?

==Page 278==

'''the report''' 
???

'''Albany... bar mirror''' 
???

'''Booth Virbling''' 
???

==Page 279==

'''Bulkley Wells''' 
???

'''Ice Saw murder''' 
???

'''sparking''' 
???

==Page 280==

'''South Pacific islands''' 
Cf Margaret Mead.

==Page 281==

'''first city''' 
???

'''"Beside the tracks at one bend stood a local lunatic"''' 
Like starting a Disney land ride.
:how so? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 14:46, 4 December 2006 (PST)

==Page 282==

'''level of hatred''' 
Cf capacitance?

'''vagging bee''' 
Neologism?

==Page 283==

'''''"joven"''''' 
Young fellow (Spanish).

'''Ellmore Disco''' 
???

'''when it was still Leadville''' 
???

'''Seven-Toed Pete''' 
Seven Card Stud

==Page 284==

'''jaconet... tartalan... crepe lissé''' 
jaconet 1.a soft, white, lightweight cotton textile 2. cotton cloth glazed on one side and dyed

'''Liberty's of London''' 
???

'''Grand Rapids style''' 
???

'''Four Corners Boys''' 
???

==Page 285==

'''million apiece''' 
Current values?

'''...it's out with that wackyzacky...'''

The 'wakizashi' is a Japanese sword - 12 to 24 inches - often worn by a Samurai together with a Katana - another sword - and the two together are then called a Daish or somesuch. Although it would appear that this sword would have sometimes been used during Hari Kiri it is not the normal Hari Kiri weapon. That is usually a short - 6 to 12 inches long - double edged knife/sword called a Tant.' 

'''hari-kari'''

'''''Trans'''. belly cutting''

What became a ritualised form of suicide in Japan cheifly amongst the nobility. It was sometimes offered to a nobleman as an honorable alternative to execution. A short knife or sword is plunged into the abdomen, drawn through and across the bowel laterally, with a small upwards twist at the end. Now extremely rare in Japan. More commonly referred to by the Chinese name for belly cutting - Seppuku - because eventually the Ritual was seen as being somewhat distastaeful, even dishonourable

'''Cal Rutan''' 
???

==Page 286==

'''Loomis''' 
Loomis Disco.

'''lowland alkali''' 
???

'''hardpan''' 
???

==Page 287==

'''chicharrones''' 
Fried pork skins.

'''''Ristras''''' 
Strings of dried red chiles.

'''sixty-degree wedges''' 
One-sixth of a pie.

'''''"Por poco te faltó La Blanca"''''' 
Translates to "You just missed La Blanca."

==Page 288==

'''Montrose''' 
A city on Colorado's Western Slope. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montrose%2C_Colorado Wikipedia entry].

'''popcorn snows''' 
???

'''vanning''' 
???

'''''comal''''' 
???

==Page 289==

'''half a cubic foot''' 
12" by 12" by 6".

==Page 290==

'''miner's gad''' 
According to the OED, "1. a steel wedge, 2. a small iron punch with a wooden handle used to break up ore."

'''McBryan's''' 
???

'''trick animal''' 
???

==Page 291==

'''Cosmopolitan''' 
Cf p260.

'''Mr. Edison's scheme... static electricity''' 
???

'''Wetherill's magnet''' 
If electric, that's Kit's domain.

==Page 292==

'''Hieronymus Wheel''' 
This may be a stretch but one of the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch is called the Circle of Hell which contains an assortment of odd creatures. As a central image there is a wheel coming out of (or going into) the mouth of a fishlike creature. The reference to hell seems appropriate for Telluride and a Japanese trade delegation in a Colorado bar may suggest the odd creatures. Just to stretch the connection a bit further, there was another Bosch, Robert, a Germany engineer who perfected a magneto ignition device in 1897 that became the standard for creating electrical sparks to start internal combustion engines. The modern Bosch Group is a leading manufacturer of automotive and industrial technology.
:While there is most certainly something Boschean about Pynchon's aesthetic, nothing in the context of this passage suggests an association with either the painting described above or the machinist Robert Bosch. Instead, the passage indicates that the term describes a roulette wheel. Neither Google nor the OED recognize the term in any meaningful way, though it may be a back formation from the term "jerry," meaning to tumble, Hieronymous being the latinate form of Jerome. This etymology is still a considerable stretch, but it fits the passage better. For an example of an AtD passage that '''does''' conjure Old Master depictions of Hell (of which Bosch painted several), albeit without suggesting Bosch specifically, see p. 210-11, "the first glimpse of Jeshimon . . . . advanced the hour."

'''Dieter''' 
German first name. Pronunciation: [diːtər]. Short for Dietrich. A Old High German combination of 'thioda' (ger: das Volk, engl: the nation) and 'heri' (ger: das Heer, engl: the army). Popular male name in Germany after WWII. Outfashioned today ''Dieter'' is referred to as comic and/or queer.
:Since "Dieter" is "the barkeep" the English word ''dieter'' for someone who prescibes a diet comes to mind.

'''bellows''' 
pic?

==Page 293==

'''''"Sumimasen... Bobusan desu... Gonnusuringaa... mottomo abunai desu"''''' 
Don't know the rest, but "Bobusan" refers to Bob and "Gonnusuringaa" is likely "Gunslinger."
 
Translation from e2535: 
mottomo abunai desu = "he is extremely dangerous" 
Sumimasen = "Pardon me" or "Excuse me" 

'''''"Anna koto"''''' 
???

'''fulgurescence''' 
A neologism, I think -- it does not appear in the OED. 'Fulgur' is Latin for lightning, 'fulgurite' being, e.g., according to the OED, "any rocky substance that has been fused or vitrified by lightning. More strictly applied to a bore or tube produced by the passage of lightning into a sandy soil." In this context, "fulgerescence," refers to bright, lightening-like flashes.

'''"The loss of clarity . . . . in the dark"''' 
See the note for Hieronymous wheel on page 292. This further enhances the Circle of Hell connection for the Hieronymous wheel note above. The painting includes several unknown creatures, including a barrel with legs, while “thrashed about” suggests the central fish monster image of the painting.
:Cf., also, p. 221, "Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really . . . . An unscheduled Explosion, introduced into the accustomed flow of the day, may easily open, now and then, passages to elsewhere," as well as p. 230, "'Let us imagine a lateral world, set only infintesimally to the side of the one we think we know.'"
::Cf., also the transdimensional travel of Buckaroo Bonzai in the Pynchon inspired film, ''The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension'' (1984), especially the images of 8th-Dimensional creatures that Bonzai sees as he passes through the mountain. [http://imdb.com/title/tt0086856/ IMDB entry].
::Cf., further, the notion of a "multiverse," that is, a physical ur-structure, comprised of many, if not infinite universes, of which ours is only one. Several contemporary cosmological theories require that a multiverse exist, though its existence remains highly conjectural. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse Wikipedia entry].

'''packing out pyrites''' 
Mining fool's gold.

'''katana''' 
Japanese samurai sword.

==Page 294==

'''Baron Akashi''' 
A Japanese general whose career included spying, but, anachronistically, his career did not begin until 1889. He was a spy in Europe during RussoJapanese War-1900? So would he've been famous even to the lengths of backwoods CO? How much spyin' can a poor boy do if he's famous?

'''Squirrel and sarsaparilla''' 
Squirrel Whiskey and Sarsaparilla Soda. Squirrel whiskey was so called because it was supposedly so strong it would drive its drinkers up a tree. Sarparilla, by contrast, is derived from the roots of the Sarsparilla tree.

==Page 295==

'''summer of '89''' 
???

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

ATD cover analysis

2006-12-12T07:20:16Z

Wardoll:

[[Image:ATD_oldcover.jpg|thumb|An earlier version of the cover. ANYONE GOT A BIGGER COPY OF THIS?|right]]
[[Image:ATD_finalcover.jpg|150px|thumb|''Against the Day'' Final cover - design by Michael Ian Kaye|right]]

The final cover of ''Against the Day'' is pretty minimalist, depicting an aged, slightly yellowing book or manuscript in reference to the novel's setting, 1893 through World War I, and the book's mock-recreation of prose from that era.

The writing on the cover seems to cast shadows behind it. The shadows are no doubt meant to simulate the double refraction one experiences when looking through a piece of Iceland Spar, but on closer inspection the writing is not doubled, but tripled, and the typefaces are different. The upper layer is a modern sans-serif font, the middle layer is an older serif font, and the bottom layer is once again a modern sans-serif font. This may indicate that the novel straddles the period where the world moved from the 19th century into the modern age. It also may represent the book in parallel universes seen through the spar.

If we assume that the "grey" title and authors name are indeed shadows then it would seem that the shadows are cast from more than one light source - and it may be from more than two light sources too as not all the letters appear to be shifted to the same degree and direction in the "shadows". Again this may be taken as representing that the book should be viewed from - or in fact is presented as from - several different perspectives as to time, place, political position etc.

Of course it should also be borne in mind that if the grey titles and authors name were shadows, there would only be one typeface, so perhaps this is all going up the wrong path! Maybe it is merely overprinting, and the version of the book we have is the third draft of the novel, and the different typefaces somehow reflect something about the imperatives or forces behind the re-drafting.

The mysterious red seal on the cover is Tibetan, and the image in the center of the seal is a Tibetan Snow Lion in front of three mountain peaks. The Snow Lion is a mythical creature which also appears in Tibet's flag.

The generally white color of the cover ties in with the light/dark metaphor that Pynchon weaves into the novel. Perhaps the cover is also largely bare so that the "reader can decide," as Pynchon writes in the book's [[Against_the_Day_description|description]], with minimal outside interference from anything but the text itself.

The book cover is designed by Michael Ian Kaye, who also designed the cover for the current paperback edition of ''Slow Learner''. This could indicate that Pynchon likes Kaye's previous work.

We also know that an earlier version of the cover was circulated in promotional material before the novel's release. Note that in the earlier cover, the mysterious red seal looks slightly different, with the writing continuing in an unbroken circle.

What exactly the seal means is no doubt revealed in the book, but the slight changes indicate that Pynchon was probably involved in the design process, as he was with ''Mason & Dixon'' (where the ampersand was changed at his request), and the cover is thus fair game in any textual analysis.

[[image:ATD_stamp.gif|left]]The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports, at :

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

'''Two Covers'''

Additionally, the front and back covers and spine depict a "picture" of the book, ''Against the Day'' (note how the seal is broken, and the cover depicted contains fine details such as edge-rubbing and even small tears to the dust jacket at lower front edge).

This is another instance of a doubling/layering of the real and unreal, the actual and represented worlds, the past and the present. But notably, also, the cover is similar to the postcard Veikko receives from his sister in Finland (p. 84), upon which both the stamps and postmarks are "not real . . . pictures of postmarks" (which had been invalidated by the Russians). Webb calls it a ''Minneskort,'' "a postcard with a picture of what a postcard used to look like . . . ." "Memory card," Veikko clarifies, "a memory of a memory."

In yet another instance of the doubling motif, the first edition of ''Against the Day'' was issued with two different bindings beneath the dustjacket: One variant has a light green back over khaki boards, and the other variant has a red back over cream-colored boards. At this point, it still isn't clear whether this variation in the bindings is a simple matter of the availability of binding material, or whether it - like the complex dust jacket - ties into themes in the book.