One: The Light Over the Ranges
1 (p. 3-9)
The Chums of Chance--I'm seeing Bobbsey Twins meet some kind of boys' pre-1960s serial. Other references?
The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit. It's set in the nation's capital. And then, some of the references are absolutely contemporary. I'm sure that the town of Thick Bush, which appears on page 8, is pure coincidence.
Princess cassamassima - It's a real book, by Henry James. 1886. Young innocent involved in assassination plot. it's political. (Cassimassima is a town and commune in south-eastern Italy; it's just above the boot heel.)
2. p. 10-20
As they came in low over the Stockyards, the smell found them, the smell and the uproar offlesh learning its mortality
the vast herds of cattle adrift in ever-changing cloudlike patterns across the Western plains, here saw that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.
Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in 1893 about the closing of the American frontier, about the shift in the American identify that had always had somewhere else to go, to settle--somewhere else that wasn't at right angles and didn't reduce choices. Think Huck Finn. Think Little House on the Prairie. Hell, think Donner Party. In any case, we've got stockyards being likened to the closing of the frontier.
herr Riemann - mathematician. http://www.math.iitb.ac.in/news/rightangle/biographies/riemann.html
the Chum of Chance is a plucky soul
Who shall neither whine nor ejaculate
For his blood's as red and his mind's as pure
As the stripes of his blazer immaculate!
Kentucky hemp suit - Google finds nothing relevant for kentucky "hemp suit" "19th century." Contemporary hemp suits in Kentucky are lawsuits, not clothing.
I love Randolph's warning about the dangers of "unprofitable delights" of the midway.
cubebs - it's a pepper grown in Java and Sumatra. It was popularly used as a medicinal in the 19th century. Later uses included flavoring gin and cigarettes. This being Pynchon, it's worth noting that among cubeb's traditional (Umani) uses was to intensity sexual pleasiure during sex--and later, in England during the 19th century, it was a treatment for gonorrhea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubeb)
Keeley Cure - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeley_Cure . It was an residential alcoholism treatment program that used proprietary (and apparently never specifically identified) "drugs" as well as behavior modification. 1879-1965. Founder was Leslie Keeley, site was Dwight, Ohio. It was a very big deal through the turn of the century.
p. 21-25
So was the Chicago Exhibition actually literally racially stratified? White stuff in the center and darker folks on the edges?
SPECIAL REINDEER SHOW. This must have been fun to write. SPECIAL REINDEER SHOW.
p. 26-35
Young DeForest, a regular wizard with the electricity -- who did DeForrest Kelly play on star Trek? Why is it that decades in the software industry didn't teach me this by osmosis?
Ray Ipsow and Scarsdale Vibe -- this, in a nutshell, is a great explanation of the attraction of socialism or the evils of a completely market-based economy. Again, he's not just talking about 1893. (AtD was published in 2007, so any coincidence between the Panic of 1893 and contemporary current events --and there's a lot of coincidence there, far more than any similarity with 1929 IMO--would have to be coincidental.)
-[I]n these times, 'need' arises directly from criminal acts of the rich, so it [need] 'deserves' whatever amount of money will atone for it. Fathomable enough for you?
-You are a socialist, sir.
-As anyone not insulated by wealth from the cares of the day is obliged to be. Sir.
"Old Zip Coon" - Real song. Sung to the tune of Turkey in the Straw. http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/minstrel/zipcoonfr.html for links to a contemporary recording. Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day. Like zippadee doodah.
1:57:
I tell you what will happen now very very soon
united states bank will be blown to the moon
their general jackson we'll him lampoon
and the very next president will be zip coon
Jackson as in Andrew Jackson. As president he closed the Bank of the United States, in 1833 (three years before its founding charter ended), as an agrarian, anti-centralist, populist measure. Essentially, the closure of the bank led to the Panic of 1837. Note that despite the name and despite the fact that it was a federal government creation, the bank was privately owned. This Panic was about paper money without backing by specie (gold/silver) and the contraction of real estate (land, not houses) loans. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bank_of_the_United_States.
I don't know what to think about coon as a racial slur wrt our current president; I can't see any parallel between jackson and shrub (who was anything but populist in his policies).
