p121 - 170

Still not done annotating what I've read.  I do have to say that this is really helping me keep track of exactly what's going on, and more importantly what it reads, but writing this up actually does take longer then reading it.

The Etienne-Louis Malus
P121 - 137

The new section, Iceland Spar, gets into a darker and more paranoid tone.  This first chapter isn't so much about the Chums as it is about what happens around them, eventually moving off to center around X.  We're introduced to the Northern territories, where the Chums are looking to complete their mission, and everyone else is trying to essentially mine the Northern Lights.  An interesting mix of the capitalist and the aetheric.  Soon after meeting Captain Padzhitnoff and his flying Tetris reference, the Chums fly into the Zone of Emergency and things really start to fall apart.  As an unidentified speaker warns an unidentified Chum, "For any day ... can turn in a moment to wilderness." (p126)  In that section, the disturbance is the mysterious appearance and disappearance of an unidentified 6th crew member.

Soon after flying into the Zone, the narrative shifts to the Etienne-Louis Malus, where the Vormance expedition is, then to Constance and Hunter Penhallow, and then to a discussion of both Norse mythology and the Penhallows.  Very Pynchon.  Pynchon soon introduces the members of the Vormance expedition, which seems similar but not parallel to the Chums.

Vormance's talk at the Transnoctial Discussion Group (p131) seems mighty important,and probably ends up containing in it every major theme of the book.  Without knowing what the book is really about, I can see:

•  Colonizing capital-T Time
•  Scientific views as a persecuted faith (Quaternionism, Aetherites)
•  God = Aether
•  Some kind of intersection of the underground and light

Pynchon's writing style definitely changes when writing about Hunter's Iceland, it becomes a more fluid style, more Pynchon then what we see in the rest of the book.

Other Notes:

• The weirdest part of this chapter is that the story of the 'Cuidado cabron' hot sauce, and how it could teleport a person to the tropics, reminded me of a dream I had and had forgotten about years ago.
• Does the fog that gets mixed into Hunter's paint and art reflect some kind of fog in Pynchon that he is putting into his writing? (p129)

The Chums and Vormance Uncover the Visitor P138-148

The story here is being told from Fleetwood Vibe's point of view.  The Chums, appearing different and more respectable than before, attempt to warn Vormance away from an artifact that they did not know existed.  Learning about this meteor/visitor/ancient artifact, the Vormance expedition digs it up.  Good job, Chums!  Despite things almost going wrong, the visitor is brought to NYC by the Vormance expedition, where it immediately escapes and begins to cause chaos. 

Oh, wait, is the creature some kind of primal capitalism?  It makes sense with the Earth = greed and politics theme.  On p 143, Magyakan describes this view from the future:

"They may not wish to harm us. They may even in some way love us.  But they have no more choice than your own sled dogs, in the terrible, to them empty, land upon which they have chosen to trespass, and where humans are the only source of food.  We are allowed to live and work until we fall from exhaustion.  But they are suffering as much as we.  Their voices will be gentle, they will administer the pain only when they must, and when they bring out the weapons, objects we've never seen before, we stare, wordless as dogs,we don't recognize them, perhaps we think they are toys or something else to amuse us..."

p 147, where Fleetwood gets into a discussion at the Explorer's Club, also goes into the corporation as the next evolutionary, cannibalistic, step for humanity.  This is a bit weak, but it does tie together.

Other Notes:

• Pynchon tends (thinking specifically of V) to do subtle changes in the story depending on perspective.  Is that the source of the change in the Chums?  Right before talking to 'Scientific Officer, Dr Counterfly' Fleetwood observes that "We must have looked to them like interchangeable insects, scurrying beneath." p139.  The other option, which I think is more likely, is that the Chums changes while observing Tesla's experiment.  The Pynchon wiki correctly points out it has been 6 years since the Chums were first introduced, so maybe just kids getting old.
• Pugnax creating sled dog labor unions (p144)

Space Ghost vs NYC
p149-155

This chapter starts off with the Chums getting a debriefing on the Visitor the Vormance expedition brought to NYC.  The Chum's view is that it is a spirit attached to the meteor the Expedition brought over.  Because some members of the party showed a deep disrespect to 'the Power', it is enacting a vengance against the city.  The chaos described in this chapter is fuller and greater than in the previous; it seems to be an unstoppable force of nature.  A few areas do support the idea that the figure is Capitalism unleashed, while others give it a more literal Lovecraftian feel.  The end of p153 describes the figure as almost a baptism for the city, forever scarring it with greed and paranoia.  p154 goes onto describe how people try to distract or appease the Visitor by intentionally destroying the city and making it more hellish. 

At the end of the chapter, Hunter gets caught up in an attempt to escape the city, and escapes into a subway into the future.  No idea.

Kit and the Ghosts p156-170

The story comes back to Kit in Yale, who is living with Scarsdale's ne'er-do-well son Colfax Vibe.  Along with being a sportsman and a lech, Scarsdale says his biggest disappointment with Colfax is that his son is too trusting of him (p157).  Scarsdale tells Kit that he has better potential as an heir, which Kit shy's away from.  Kit seems drawn to the Vibe's world, and everything physical, but he is also distracted by math and physics.  Kit goes on vacation with Colfax, has a fling with cousin Dittany Vibe, and learns bits and pieces of Vibe family history.

Along the way, there's a fair talk of, not quite ghosts but forbidden places, maybe? Things that aren't there.  There's the second floor of the vacation house which belongs to the previous occupants p 160 (servant's quarters?  showing some class separation?).  Then there's Fleetwood's yearning for someplace else, "It is always a hidden place, the way into it is not obvious, the geography is as much spiritual as physical. If you should happen upon it, your strongest certainty is not that you have discovered it but returned to it.  In a single great episode of light, you remember everything" p165.  Kit calls this place "Home"  Then Fleetwood tells a story tangential to Zion.

I do enjoy the discussion between Scarsdale and Foley walker about the sudden abundance of gold.  "This money is coming out of nowhere!  I feel myself turning into a goddamned socialist ... My mind - or the part I use for thinking about business matters - aches." p167

The chapter ends with a section reminiscent of V depicting Fleetwood in S Africa as an extroverted suicide.  It jibes well with his desire to run home seen earlier, but the home was associated with light and the sky, while S Africa is associated with the mines.

Putting the meta before the actual, I just found a wiki dedicated to Against the Day, at http://pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.  There's a bunch of good stuff there, I particularly like the description of the book as it appeared on Amazon, evidently written by Pynchon.
Still playing with the format, lets see what works:

Merle Rideout's Chapter (57-80)
Merle's story starts with a trip to Cleveland to join, or at least observe, an Aetherist community, a community of scientists, lunatics, and light adicts held together by their obsession and the belief in ether.  The Aetheric community begins to crumble after the capture of Charles "Blinky" Morgan, who is quite possibly some kind of living refraction of Edward Morley, of the Michelson-Morley experiment which helped to disprove the existance of Aether.  After "Blinky", a real person wanted for killing a policeman, was captured, the Michelson-Morley showed that the speed of light was constant, and no Aetheric wind was detectable.  O. D. Chandrasekhar, who was just hanging out in Cleveland at the time, puts forward that this could prove the existance of Aether, elevating it to a higher, more ubiquitous standing, making it into 'akasa', the basis of reality.  The bartender, Roswell, replies "What I worry about is that Aether will turn out to be something like God.  If we can explain everything we want without it, then why keep it?" (p63)

Merle then gains an interest in photography, becomes a lightning rod salesman, befriends a ball of lightning named Skip, and moves to Colorado to practice his photography, which is becoming closer and closer to alchemy.  In Colorado, he meets with Webb Traverse, the star of the next chapter, and they discuss politics and alchemy (p76-80).  Merle and Webb, in their very Pynchon oblique way of talking, lay out a Philosopic Mercury, or mercury without anything you'd recognize as mercury, which is a relative of the Philosopher's Stone.  To counter this, there's the 'let's call it Anti-Stone'.  If the Philosopher's Stone turns lead into gold, it seems like the Anti-Stone (Capitalist's Stone?) turns gold into explosives.  But we're in a new age, chemistry has replaced alchemy, did so around the time capitalism started to take off.  Now, instead of lead into gold we turn sweat into dollars.

Merle's path is an interesting one.  He starts directly in the Aether, and gradually descends into photography, and then almost into alchemy and mining, a complete reversal of what Plato intended.  The last lines of the chapter refer to the possibility that his life has been revolving around silver and it has been drawing him towards it.  Said like I did, it sounds like a fall for money, but Pynchon's descriptions of such falls here and throughout the book make it sound like a loving descent into ... something.

Running in parallel with Merle's story is his daughter, Dally, who is mainly pining after her mother, who ran off with a hypnotist.

Webb Traverse's Chapter (81-96)
Can't say this chapter had much for me.  This chapter is all about dynamite and freedom, starting and ending with trains being blown up on the 4th of July.  Webb is an anarchist former miner running around Colorado with his family.  Maybe this chapter is more about historical contexts that I don't have, like the Cripple Creek miner's strike.

Kitt Traverse's Chapter (97-106)
Kitt, Webb's son, goes to work for Nicolai Tesla.  If Webb's chapter was about anarchy, Kitt's is about work.  "Sure, it's always something...Chores, something." Kitt says, "Tithing." Tesla said, "giving back to the day."  Kitt even runs into Scarsdale Vibe's man, Foley (from ch2 or something), who offers him a full scholarship at a distant school in return for working for Vibe.  I'd have to go back to check Foley's story, but I believe that the tearing apart the Traverse family is the entire point of the scholarship.

Foley's own story is that Vibe, instead of fighting in the Civil War himself, he paid Foley to do it.  Foley finished the war surprisingly alive, although with a bullet in his head which allowed him to hear voices that gave him access to extremely accurate investment advice, ranging from horse races to stocks.  This link between Foley and Vibe is similar enough to the link between Morgan and Morley, Foley even says he could be more Scarsdale Vibe then Vibe himself (p102), but this repetition of doubles doesn't really have a solid shape for me just yet.

Chums of Chance's Chapter (107-118)
The Chums fly to a volcano across the world from Colorado to run unspecified tests for Dr Tesla.  It is worth noting that Tesla's work in Colorado is held by some to be a suspect in the Tunguska event of 1908.  The Chums are in a rough and divided state at the start of the chapter, as they fly to their destination, but once they go through their 4th of July experiments at the mountain, after the break they are back into cohesion.  Even Chick Counterfly wants to develop protocols to avoid this happening again (p113).

Once the experiment is complete, the Chums get more orders through the double refracting magic of a special pearl (p114).  Their next mission is to go to the North Pole via the center of the earth (Telluric Interior), to intercept a boat.  While in the Telluric Interior, they are embroiled in gnomish intrigue which is detailed in The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth.

Miles is acting odd through the chapter.  In Chicago, we saw how he was prone to bouts of extreme clarity, and we see that here as well in the adventure in the bowels of the earth.  But we're also seeing him spout just pure jibberish, like 'Gloymbroognitz'.  I can draw a parallel between Miles and Foley, but so far he seems like a plot device guiding the Chums through largely irrelevant plots.

Also, we're seeing some direct references for the ideal world of the air, and the ugly, political world of the earth, particularly the inside of the earth.

Choice Quotes

• "We were always supposed - by whom it is less clear - to be above such behavior, " asserted the "X.O." somberly.  "Literally above.  That sort of bickering may be for ground people, but it is not for us." (p113)
• "We cannot attack these fellows," protested Lindsay. "for they are shorter than we, and the Rules of Engagement clearly state--" (p117)
• "Brother, we are the stripes and solids on the pool tablke of earthly existence," the Rev explained, "and God and his angels are the sharpers who keep us ever in motion." (p86)
• The escape scene and Aetherite discussions, p61

p26-56

A bunch of disjointed introductions here.  We start off meeting Merle Rideout, his girl Chevrolette McAdoo, and daughter Dally.  Some mention is made of his wife who ran off with Zombini the Mysterious.  Merle, I believe, plays a larger part later on, but so far he's just another lecherous character.

Professor Heino Vanderjuice and his sidekick Ray Ipsow also land in the fair, and kick up some potential plot and thematic points.  Vanderjuice is in town to meet with Scarsdale Vibe, an industrialist villain of hyperbolic proportion.  The kind of guy who puts on a disguise and rides his own private train.  Scarsdale is interested in getting Vanderjuice to design a device to counter Tesla's device to deliver free power through the air. 

Tesla really was working on a system for free power, although it is not clear if that was happening at the World's Fair.  At the time of the World's Fair, Tesla and Edison were involved in a fight over the fate of electricity.  Houses were just getting wired for electrical power, and Tesla wanted the standard to be AC power, while Edison preferred DC.  The fight between the two became a classic Engineer vs Businessman battle, with Tesla's AC power backed up with real engineering reasons, and Edison probably driven by a desire to not pay for Tesla's patents.  Edison took the fight to the people by shocking an elephant to death to show the dangers of AC power.  The electric chair was also created as part of the same ad campaign.  From what I remember, it was Tesla's show at the World's Fair that convinced the world that AC power was safe enough.

The theme of the individual and the system, one of Pynchon's favorites, is brought up by Ray while Vanderjuice is making his deal with Scarsdale:

"Lately [Vanderjuice]'s been keeping those ideas pretty much to himself, like he's finally learned how much they might be worth.  Seen that happen enough, Lord knows.  This big parade of modern inventions, all spirited march tunes, public going ooh and aah, but someplace lurking just out of sight is always some lawyer or accountant, beating that 2/4 clockwork and running the show.""

Once Vanderjuice's chapter is done, we meet Lew Basnight, a detective working with Nate Privett at White City Investigations.  Lew has a Kafka-esque history, and his work at the detective agency leads him to spying against anarchists.  Anarchy is getting mentioned every other chapter, so I think that's pretty officially a theme now.  The best part of Lew's story is page 45 where he is security for the visiting Archduke Ferdinand, who'd actions make it clear why he was killed.  If I ever say, "Your mama, she plays third base for the Chicago White Stockings?", know that I'm quoting Archduke Ferdinand.

By the end of the section, time gets rushed forward to the end of the World's Fair.  The Chums, landlocked at the fair until the end, seem to have decayed a bit without any adventure to sustain them, but eventually mysterious orders are delivered to them.  Lew also is reassigned to Denver.

Introduction to the Blog, and Against the Day

Starting off in a sea of uncertainty, this blog is mainly to keep track of some of the books I'm reading, starting off with Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon.  The uncertainty comes from whether I'll keep this up, and whether I'll finish the book this time.
I've started this book a few times before, and never made it more then two hundred pages in.  While you can skip pages and pages of most books, Pynchon has this style where every word is somehow intimately dependent on the previous word, so if your eyes glaze over for a second, you're completely lost.  My favorite example of this is on the first page of Gravity's Rainbow, where he goes from a character's dream to a character's daytime routine, and this transition happens in the middle of a paragraph with the key phrase "but it is already light".

But, on to Against the Day.  I've finished the first three chapters, and it does look like a fun book with neat ideas in a style both necessarily and unnecessarily complex.  We've met the 'Chums of Chance', Commander Randolph St Cosmo, Master-at-Arms and general unfun dad Lindsay Noseworth, klutz Miles Blundell, kid Darby Suckling, city tough Chick Counterfly, and Pugnax, the dog who can read.  Throughout these chapters, there's chaos and debauchery just under the surface.  Pugnax is reading 'The Princess Casamassima', which Lindsay says is about "The inexorably rising tide of World Anarchism" (p6), the Chums scare off a nude photo session as they land at the World's Fair (p13), and mainly the World's Fair itself is a thinly hidden red light district (p22-23)

Temptation, much to Lindsay's chagrin,lurked at every step. Pavilions here seemed almost to represent not nations of the world but Deadly Sins. Pitchmen in their efforts at persuasion all but seized the ambulant youths by their lapels.

"Exotic smoking practices around the world, of great anthropological value!"

"Scientific exhibit here boys, latest improvements to the hypodermic syringe and its many uses!"

Here Waziris from Waziristan exhibiting upon one another various techniques for waylaying travelers, which reckoned in that country as a major source of income... Tarahumara Indians from northern Mexico crouched, apparently in total nakedness, inside lath-and-plaster replicas of the caves of their native Sierra Madre, pretending to eat vision-producing cacti that sent them into dramatic convulsions scarcely distinguishable from those of the common "geek" long familiar to American carnival-goers... Tungus reindeer herders stood gesturing up at a sign reading SPECIAL REINDEER SHOW, and calling out in their native tongue to the tip gathered in front, while a pair of women in quite revealing costumes--who, being blonde and so forth, did not, actually, appear to share with the Tungus many racial characteristics--gyrated next to a very patient male reindeer, caressing him with scandalous intimacy, and accosting passersby with suggestive phrases in English, such as "Come in and learn dozens ways to have fun in Siberia!" and "See what really goes on during long winter nights!"

"This doesn't seem," Lindsay adrift between fascination and disbelief, "quite...authentic, somehow."

I just had to include that whole page, because gosh is it funny.

In other news, we have in this section the first example of, maybe, the mixing of metaphore and science.  (p9) Lindsay and Randolph are explaining to Chick that it gets colder as you go higher, Randolph likens going up to going north.  Chick observes that if you go north long enough, you pass the North Pole and go south, so maybe you're going down again?  It sounds like he's stumbled on something, and Randolph says you go toward another surface, but an earthly one.  Mysteries!

We've also met Penny and the Bindlestiffs of the Blue (p18).  Her story of the Garcons de `71 and the weird energy is something I don't know what to make of yet (p19)