Difference between revisions of "ATD 358-373"

Revision as of 14:27, 23 March 2007

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page 358

Camp Bird
Camp Bird Mine, Ouray, Ouray County, CO, is a gold-zinc-silver-lead-copper mine operated from 1896 to 1990. It located six miles south of Ouray and produced yearly 1.5 million ounces of gold and 4 million ounces of silver until 1990. Camp Bird.

Archie Dipple
???

". . . camel herd imported years ago . . ."
Camels were imported in 1855 for use by the U.S. Army as pack animals. They were quite capable, but the Army eventually abandoned them around the Civil War. Those that escaped became a feral population that survived in the Southwest until 1941. Wikipedia

kids in cylindrical hats
hotel pageboys. pix

Page 359

bunco-steerer
A con man or fraudster, but the use here seems less malicious than usual.

Macking for a mack
Pimping for a pimp. Mack: a pimp (from English mackerel or French maquereau).

Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818-83) German socialist and economist, founder of modern international Communism. The son of a Jewish lawyer, studied law at Bonn and Berlin but took up history, philosophy and Feuerbach's materialism. Moved to Paris in 1843 after his radical newspaper was closed by the German authority. Expelled from Paris in 1845 for his radical jounalism he moved to Brussels. Based on study of the French Revolution, together with fellow exile, Friedrich Engels (1920-95), they wrote the famous Communist Manifesto (1848), manifesto, a masterpiece of political proganganda and intellectual brow-beating. It begins with 'A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism.' It goes on to attack the state as a mere instrument of oppression, religion and culture are mere ideologies of the capitalist class. It ends with 'The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains . . . Working men of all countries, unite!' The immediate result was Marx's expulsion from Brussels. He and his family finally settled in London where, after 30 years lonely study in the British Museum reading room, he produced his life work, Das Kapital (Capital, 3 vols., 1867-94). Das Kapital (Cf page 360) was unfinished when Marx died in 1883, his disciple and collaborator, Engels completed the work. In it Marx argues that capitalist expandsion depends on surplus value, capitalist competition is only successful at the expense of the worker, the antagonisms must inevitably lead to revolution and the extinction of the capitalist class, which ultimately lead ot a classless society. Marx had little to do with practical politics. The intellectual rigous of Marxism proved to be far inferior to its emotive power. To his followers and disciples, dreaming of social justice and never giving a moment's critical thought to his writings, Marx provided them with yet another substitute religion.
It should be noted that "Marxism" as it is commonly known today (oversimplified to meet the practical needs of the communist movement) is quite different from Marx's original oeuvre, which, apart from the Communist Manifesto and some textbook excerpts, was seldom read by rank-and-file party members (or leaders, for that matter). His view of society as a dynamic system of interacting objective forces, with economy as the decisive factor, was an important step forward in social thinking. Also his early, unpublished writings are stimulating excursions into post-Hegelian philosophical anthropology. His influence is unmistakable in the works of such 20th century intellectual gurus as Sartre, Habermas, or Bourdieu. He was also a sharp political journalist, catering for, paradoxically, a middle-class audience. For more of Marx.

Page 360

Capital
The magnum opus of German socialist Karl Marx (1818-83), Das Kapital (Capital, 3 vols. 1867-94). According to Norman Davies of University of London, Capital was a "sustained exercise in speculative social philosophy, a rambling jumble of brilliant insights and turgid pedantry. It borrowed a number of disparate ideas current at the time, and reassembled them in the original combination of 'dialectical materialism'. Marx aimed to create the same sort of universal theory for human society that Darwin had done for natural history; . . . He took the subject of materialist history from Feuerbach, the class struggle from Saint-Simon, the dictatorship of the proletariat from Babeuf, the labor theory of value from Adam Smith, the theory of surplus from Bray and Thompson, the principle of dialectical progress from Hegel. All these components were put togerther in s messianic doctrine . . ." See Karl Marx of page 359 and Capital.

across the day
???

taken in
Out = alive; in = living dead.

Saturday nights
Since "V" Pynchon has presented heavy drinking as a virtue.

sanctuary
(Why leave free places at all, though?)

Chicago-built
Railway hub leads to manufacture of heavy goods.

built or made in Chicago !

Sean O'Farrells
"The popular Shawn O'Farrell was created in Butte, Montana, a straight shot of whiskey followed with a glass of cold beer; it gave birth to the boilermaker." From this website A Google search for Sean O‘Farrell came up with this link but the contributor is afraid you need a campus-location to access it.

army "A" tents
A-Frame tents are canvas tents supported by a vertical pole at either end and a cord or horizontal pole between the two along the top. When viewed from the entrance end, they form a triangle, hence the name. Image of Civil War era A-Frames.

bars had toothmarks
(Patrons so drunk they sit on floor and gnaw edge of bar?) Maybe many teeth have been knocked out in these bars?

I take it to mean toothmarks from those whose heads were bounced off the bar during a violent confrontation.

Page 361

Pinkerton and public
Assuming one is willing to take "Pinkerton" as a substitution for "private," it being a "private investigations firm," then this may be an allusion to Jurgen Habermas's work examining the distinction (and frequent lack thereof) between the public and private spheres of social interaction. Wikipedia on Habermas.

Page 363

the Wall
Death?

chavalitos
Kids (Spanish).

calico recital
I.e., wife's conventional plea.

side o' beef
She is both rhyming on his name and comparing him to something that one hangs.

. . . want to do nothing but be down at them famous little feet
???

Page 364

Denver
Actually mine school at Golden, 15 miles west?

purple... orange
(Clashing colors keep turning up as a motif.)

January colt
From the Racecourse Association: All racehorses are given the nominal birthday of January 1st. Thus a "two-year-old" born in June and one born in January of the same year are considered to be of the same age for the purposes of satisfying the conditions of some races re: weight carried. In reality, the January horse may be considered to have a significant advantage in terms of physical development at this early stage in its career.

Borrasca
Borrasca in Spanish means storm, squall, depression, or area of low pressure. But apparently it can also mean an exhausted mine, and 'Going borrasca' means "becoming mined-out". Interestingly, this is very close to the English word 'borassic', ie. out of cash. This comes from Cockney Rhyming Slang: 'boracic lint' meaning 'skint', ie without any money.

Page 365

Bridget McGonigal
a slide in the San Juans named after a mine owner's wife.

A real feature?

to fill the day
(Day motif.)

Page 366

sled
(Cf Dally and Frank.)

Jake
Okay (slang).

dead and gone, and therefore born again
Several characters in AtD have a similar experience—Lew Basnight on page 185 is an example.

Page 367

Thrapston Cheesely III
???

Madame Aubergine
"Aubergine" is French for eggplant. Cf. p. 67, "'my little eggplant.'"

Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin
???

Yup Toy
Expensive yuppie gadget, eg iPod.

naphtha-light
Obscure fuel-into-light motif variant.

Page 368

$3.50-a-quart
About $75 today.

an exquisite
one who is overly fastidious in dress or ornament.

Monsieur Peychaud
Antoine Amadie Peychaud, a Creole apothecary who moved to New Orleans from the West Indies and set up shop in the French Quarter in the early 1800s. weblink

Sazeracs
A New Orleans cocktail. Wikipedia entry.

Bob Stockton
???

Absinthe Frappés
Read about absinthe in America at The Virtual Absinthe Museum.

...some form of zombie powder
the most common ingredients of Haitian "poudres zombi" according to this website are Canetoad (DMT, Bufotenin, heart steroids), Pufferfish (Tetrotodoxin) , Hispaniolan Common Tree Frog (?) and "Human Remains"(?).

In Colombia the effects of an intoxication with Burundanga (Scopolamine) are described as those of a Zombie Powder

bengaline
A fabric having a crosswise ribbed effect made of silk, wool, or synthetic fibers weblink.

Medici collar
Medici collar is a flared, fan-shaped collar with a V-opening at the front popular in the 1540s and 1550s after similar styles seen in the portrait of Catherine de Medici in Wikipedia.

a few samples here can't see any collar samples!

bastard chinchilla
Chinchilla is a heavy twilled woolen coating. Bastard here means 'false', but not sure whether it refers to material or style.

glissandi
Glissando (plural: glissandi) is a musical term that refers to either a continuous sliding from one pitch to another or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another.

whorehouse professor
Just as it was for aeronauts, "Professor" was a customary title for pianists in low surroundings.

voodoo
A polytheistic religion practiced chiefly by West-Indian Negroes, deriving principally from African cult worship and containing elements borrowed from the Catholic religion.

Page 369

cheurice sausage
spelled "chaurice",[typo or variant?],it is a spicy Cajun pork sausage. See "POCHE'S, Smoked Chaurice" at Cajungrocer.com. There is a Portuguese variant, a garlic sausage with another spelling yet. Chouriço.

gumbo
A spicy, hearty stew or soup, found typically on the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S. and very common in Louisiana and the Lowcountry around Charleston, South Carolina. It usually consists of rice and soup, the latter can contain seafood (shrimp, crab or crawfish), fowl (duck, chicken) and other meats.

étouffé
Also, étouffée, literally means smothered, choked off. It is a Creole seafood dish, a tangy tomato-based sauce, typically served over rice, similar to gumbo, very popular in New Orlean. The usual staple of an étouffée is crawfish, whereas shrimp or crabmeat are more often found in gumbos.

sassafras
A genus of two species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae. It's root, bark, wood and leaves have many usages: perfumes, insect repellent, soft drink (root beer), dye, drugs and many others. The leaves are used for thickening sauces and soups, and when dried and ground are known as filé powder, a spice used in Cajun, Creole and other Louisiana cooking.

Italian Troubles
???

Va fongool-a
The original Italian phrase is "Va'a fare in culo" meaning go do it in the ass, or simply "fuck you."

Maman Tant Gras Hall
Mama-So-Fat Hall.

guignette
chisel?

"Dope" Breedlove and his Merry Coons
Dope breeds love? Maybe Pynchon is lampooning the vicious stereotyping of the whole act, i.e. Those who named them consider them dumb,happy,love breeding black folk.

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

traps
Equipment, gear, luggage.

Page 370

Ramos gin fizz
Another New Orleans cocktail. Wikipedia entry.

Anarchist theory
At the core of anarchist thought lies the contention that all forms of domination are hateful, that government is not just unnecessary but harmful. Early believers in England and France held that the workers should avoid involvment in parliamentary politics, and should liberate themselves by direct action on the streets and in the factories. As a result of an extreme reaction against the extreme autocracy of the Russian Empire, two Russian famous anarchists, Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76) and Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), proclaimed that anarchists organize in order to destroy states. German anarchist Max Sirner (1806-56) stressed the absolute rights of the individual to freedom from institutional control. This principle ruled out any chance of an effective anarchist organization. Anarchism inspired the birth of modern terrorism. The idea was that sensational acts of murder or destruction would publicize injustice, break the resolve of government policy, and shatter the nerve of the ruling elite. (taken from Norman Davies' Europe: A History (1996).)

Benjamin Tucker
1854-1939, American individualist anarchist. Wikipedia.

Land League
The Irish Land League. It was an Irish political organization (Land League) of the late 19th centruy aimed to abolish landlordism in Irland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period (1870s, 1880s and 1890s) of the Land League's agitation is known in Irland as the Land War, actually not a "war" but rather a prolonged period of civil unrest (Land War).

Jass
An article in the OED on the etymology of the word Jazz by a Bob Rigter traces the word to French "Chasser" and says the word "jass' was in use in New Orleans around 1900!
"The Grand Larousse de la Langua Française (1971) derives CHASSER from Classical Latin CAPTARE. It provides two related meanings: 'chercher à prendre' and 'pousser devant soi, obliger à avancer ... faire avancer rapidement'. Clearly, the first can be related to the sexual connotation, and the second to the rhythmical connotation of the word JASS as it was used in New Orleans round 1900."
The OED lists the earliest print usage of "Jazz," originally a dance and not, as in current use, the musical form, as 1909. The exact dating of this episode is unclear, though it seems likely to have occurred earlier. The usage is not anachronistic though its precise usage(as a musical form rather than a dance)may be unknown. As for the unusual spelling, the OED lists "Jass" as a variant, though with no information as to where or when it was prevalent. see OED article above.

Wolfe Tone O'Rooney
The author probably had Theobald Wolfe Tone, commonly known as Wolfe Tone, in mind when he created Wolfe Tone O'Rooney. Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98), an Irish revolutionary and one of the founders of the Society of United Irishmen (United Irishmen) in 1791. The society envisioned the union of Protestant and Catholic Irland to work toward constitutional independence as a republic on the model of the United States. In 1795 it shifted from a constitutional to a revolutionary approach. Mr. Tone was inspired with republican idealism by the successes of the American Revolution and by the apparent success of the French Revolution. He was instrumental in several abortive attempts to secure French support for Irish revolution in the 1790s. Wolfe Tone was captured at sea during one of these attempts (1798 Irish Rebellion) and sentenced to death for high treason. He committed suicide, allegedly by cutting his own throat, in prison in Dublin. Wolfe Tone is worshiped in Irland as an iconic figure and the father of Irish Republicanism. (Wolfe Tone).

Fenian
Term (often derogatory) for Irish nationalists. Thought to be derived from the name of the mercenary tribes who protected the king of Eire.

boycotting
The word boycott arose in the autumn of 1880 to describe the action instituted by the Irish Land League towards those who incurred its hostility and is derived from the name of Captain Charles Boycott (1832-79), an English estate agent of an absentee landlord, the Earl Erne. Captain Boycott not only refused the protesting farmers' demand of rent reduction but also ejected them from the land. Organized by the Land League, he was subject to social ostracism; the Land League proclaimed: "Let every man in the parish turn his back on him; have no communications with him; have no dealings with him". His workers stopped working in the house, in the field and the house. Local bussinessmen stopped trading with him and the postman refused to delivery his mails. Wikipedia.

"Sligo and Tipperary"
Counties in Ireland. Wikipedia pages for Sligo and for Tipperary.

. . . a metaphorical device whose tenor . . .
Refers to I.A. Richards' identification of metaphor as two discrete elements, "tenor" and "vehicle." In "my love is a rose," "my love" is the tenor, "a rose," the vehicle (see the Wikipedia entry Metaphor for more). The reference to tenor is a reminder that metaphor is itself a doubling, refractory device.

Page 371

Red Onion
New Orleans night club on Rampart Street. In the "Back o Town" district, also called the "colored red light district," it was in its day quite a dive. Still in operation.

the Deux Espèces
French: the Two Species. In Roman Catholic liturgy, la sainte Communion sous les deux espèces is "Holy Communion under both kinds," that is, when the communicant receives both the wine and the Host.

Flaco
Skinny man (Spanish) or, as a nom de guerre, "Slim."

Page 372

"the more repressive the State is, the closer life under it resembles Death"
An allusion to the theories of Mexican-American psychoanalyst Norman O. Brown, whose works, Life Against Death (1959) and Love's Body (1966) were an important influence on Gravity's Rainbow. Brown, elaborating on and radicalizing Freud's theories of the death drive as discussed in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), argues that all submission to the state necessarily constitutes a form of psychic repression. Brown saw this repression as resulting from a desire for and ultimately being tantamount to death.

Those interested should seek out Lawrence C. Wolfley's excellent article "Repression's Rainbow: The Presence of Norman O. Brown in Pynchon's Big Novel," first published in PMLA, Vol. 92, No. 5 (Oct., 1977), pp. 873-889, but reprinted frequently.

"the bombing of the Teatro Lyceo during a performance of Rossini's opera William Tell
On November 7, 1893, the opening night of the season, an anarchist dissident threw two bombs into the Barcelona opera house, only one bomb exploded killing twenty and injuring many more. Wikipedia entries for the Opera House, Barcelona, Rossini, and his William Tell opera. Babel Fish translates "Liceo," the Spanish name for the opera house, to grammar school, but that's just Babelfish.

Montjuich
Catalan for "Hill of the Jews," a broad hill overlooking Barcelona, atop which a 17th century fortress sits. The fortress shelled the city in 1842 following a popular uprising and was used through the reign of Franco to hold political prisoners. Wikipedia.

latifundios
Spanish landed estates, a remnant of the Roman social order. Wikipedia.

Anarchist Czolgosz had assassinated McKinley
Leon Czolgosz, the son of a Polish immigrant in Detroit, MI, shot and mortally wounded President McKinley on September 6, 1901 in Buffalo, New York, at the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exhibition, a World's Fair held in Buffalo because it could be powered by electricity from Niagara Falls. McKinley died on September 16. Czolgosz was quickly found guilty and was executed by electrocution October 29, 1901. Wikipedia entries for Czolgosz, McKinley, and the Pan-American Exposition.

the Paris Commune
The "socialist government that briefly ruled Paris from 18 March (more formally from 26 March) to 28 May 1871," cited from Wikipedia.

Page 373

a single point . . . upon the next
That is, a place that that is beyond time, where the movement of the meridians (lines of longitude) have no effect. The only part of the earth where this is literally true is the axis. See, therefore, the Chums' journey through the Telluric Interior," pp. 114-18.

Despedida
Goodbye (Spanish).

beignets
New Orleans-style square, holeless doughnuts usually sprinkled with powdered sugar, famously served at Cafe Du Monde. Website.

Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Russian anarchist and revolutionary. Wikipedia entry.

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Russian prince and anarchist, author of Mutual Aid. Wikipedia entry.

Eusebio Gómez
Wolfe Tone takes a historic name. In 1815 Eusebio Gómez received a royal land grant that included now-prosperous Jupiter Island, Florida. The land was later subdivided and, around 1900, a British development company acquired it.

a sus órdenes
Sp., "at your service."

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