Difference between revisions of "ATD 119-148"

Revision as of 10:11, 8 December 2006

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

Page 121

"Ray-rush"
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions.

Page 122

dazzle-painting
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[1]

intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research (Wikipedia entry). Also suggestive of the ECHELON network (Wikipedia entry), comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (The Crying of Lot 49), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (Gravity's Rainbow), etc.

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

Lloyd's used to ring a 'Lutine Bell' to announce the fate of ships at risk. [Wikipedia]

last eclipse
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? (partial table)

Page 123

lookout telegraph
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

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

Ice Pirates
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof movie of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

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

nasal dislocation
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

Page 124

Na sobrat' ya po nebo!
?

Page 125

a roman-feuilleton by M. Eugène Sue
A roman-feuilleton or serial novel. M. Eugène Sue was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. Wikipedia entry on M. Eugène Sue

red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...

Isafjördr
Seems to be in Iceland?

The "extra man" of Arctic myth

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [2]

See also NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey "Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

the true face
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [cf]

bonzoline
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [cite]

Page 126

inukshuk
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk

a truth beyond the secular
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on page 113, and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?

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

Étienne-Louis Malus
See page 114.

Page 127

Constance Penhallow
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of canstancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned on page 128, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix pen- is Gaelic for head, principal, or chief, in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for nearly, almost (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

Harald the Ruthless
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless

Ginnungagap
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap

Page 128

Hunter Penhallow
See above, Constance Penhallow.

Bay of Röerford
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

lower-eighties
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [map]

Page 129

Meat Olaf
Anagram.

Cuidado Cabrón
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, "watch out, fucker!" hot sauce.

Page 130

Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

Candlebrow University
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. Wikipedia entry.

Fleetwood Vibe
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a neighborhood on Pynchon's native Long Island. Both are/were presumably wealthy neighborhoods.

bucket-shop
Business designed to cheat people. [Wikipedia]

Flannelette
Little washcloth.

Harriman... Schiff
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [Wikipedia]

Page 131

Outer Hebrides
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

Page 133

Ynglingsaga
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. Wikipedia entry

... even of days not yet transpired.
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. Wikipedia entry

Page 134

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

infinitesimal circle
Cf p58.

the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.
In Ulysses, James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green wals of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity.

Page 135

Mush-It-Away
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

Page 136

kedgework
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on it's mooring or anchoring lines.

Page 138

From the Journals of Mr. Fleetwood Vibe...
So begins a short narrative, spanning pp.138-155, which bears some of the hallmarks characteristic of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft: (1) a narrator (Fleetwood) who relates a series of horrible, cosmic events in the form of a memoir or journal entry; (2) a slumbering entity, or "visitor" (p149), mistaken for a more mundane object (meteorite, in this case), and; (3) the incapacity of humans to anticipate or respond to the foreignness of this cosmic vistior and its actions. Given that this horrible thing was retrieved from the Arctic, it is reminiscent of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" (though, Antarctic in setting; 1931; Wikisource text of the novella) and, given the meteor-like form of this visitor, "The Colour out of Space" (1927; Wikisource text of the story).

Nesselrode pudding
From The Penguin Book of Food and Drink, ed. Paul Levy:
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

Page 139

Dr. Counterfly... bearded
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found here, detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe here.

nunatak
[Wikipedia]

Page 140

a large brass speaking-trumpet
As in the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in The Crying of Lot 49.

Breguet-style arrowheads
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. Wikipedia entry [pic]

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

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

The "second sight" Dr. Vormance refers to is the subject of Stephen King's novel The Shining, wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power.

Page 141

misfortunes of certain Egyptologists
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [history]

Page 143

Tungus
Siberian language. [Wikipedia]

Page 146

lines
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports. A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

Explorers' Club
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).

"War any moment"
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [Wikipedia]

the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse

Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” Wikipedia entry

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

         They went across the veldt,
         As hard as they could pelt.

From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.” Wikipedia entry

Page 147

Borchardt
1894 forerunner of Luger. [pic and info]

Page 148

the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." Wikipedia entry

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