Jennie Profane

animals notes

2009-12-09T01:56:00.002-05:00

'fustI love animals

So. We've got the professor and the shetland. (And whose croft do they retire to, anyway? If it were hers, wouldn't it be north Scotland, and not north England?) Also Ruperta's dog, Mouflette.

In v, Veronica the rat. In GR, Grigory the octopus (granted, not love so much, but still).

As pals, we've got the common-sense camel who takes Lindsay to the Chums ("[o]r was it the camel they were trying to lure?"), and, of course, Pugnax.

old notes

2009-12-09T01:56:00.001-05:00

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).

Where We're At: Part 5: Rue du Depart

2009-07-20T16:31:00.002-04:00

End: Dally, Kit; Reef, Yashmeen; Frank, Stray, Jesse; the Chums.

Dally is in Paris. She broadcasts (once) to Merle on the radio (she doesn't exactly KNOW that he's listening)--tells him all she's done since she left Telluride. She's appearing in a Wilshire Vibe-produced operetta. Earlier (1915), she'd married Kit. They'd lived in Torino; the war had begun and they were miserable together; she ran into and gotten back together with Clive Crouchmas (never mind that he'd tried to sell her into white slavery). Kit's in Ukraine or somewhere now "off on some grand search after she didn't know what". He keeps sending letters, and sometimes sounds like he wants to come back; she's not sure she wants him.
Earlier in Torino, Kit went to the address Mulciber had given him and got work doing aircraft aerodynamics. He'd run into people from Gottingen. He'd invited Dally to come with him flying--she said no, didn't realize how important it was at the time. Divebombing a biplane at Torino factory strikers with his friend Renzo, Kit realized that it was all political; the strike was crushed, strikers killed.
[Remaining in earlier in Torino] Dally had randomly seen Yashmeen and Reef, with Ljubica, walk by her building; they were refugees and had come looking for Kit; Kit and Reef made up; Reef worked for the Italian army rigging cableways (against Austria).
Colfax Vibe showed up in Torino, too.
Kit began flying for Italy. The nosedives are like bombing in Colorado. After a fight which started about who the real enemy was, Dally had left for Paris. She sent Kit a postcard with her address when she got there.

Reef, Yashmeen, and Ljubica left Torino (and Kit), sailed to America claiming to be Italian immigrants. They made their way west looking for "someplace, some deep penultimate town the capitalist/Christer gridwork hadn't got to quite yet" and in Montana ran into Frank, Stray, and Jesse who are looking for the same thing. They join up. Jesse's a bit uncomfortable; he's been calling Frank "Pa". Yashmeen becomes pregnant again (daughter Plebecula); Stray and Frank's daughter Ginger is around Ljubica's age. Yashmeen and Stray may become lovers--it's not clear.

Dally, Paris. She randomly runs into Kit's old friend Policarpe, from Belgium. He says that peace and plenty are the illusion; they're still in Hell and have been since 1914. And there's Kit. He'd seen Vanderjuice in Lvov after the war; Vanderjuice had earlier intended to kill Scarsdale and been saved by the Chums (who would take him or Kit wherever either would want to go). One day Vanderjuice vanished. Kit left and wandered and somehow was in Shambhala; he'd been on one of their stamps; and somehow he's also in Paris.

The Chums watch postwar Paris from the sky. The wives are still there; they all become pregnant; the ship has expanded into a whole city; there are kids, dogs, pets. The Inconvenience has become its own destination "where any wish that can be made is at least addressed, if not always granted. For every with to come true would mean that in the known Creation, good unsought and uncompensated would have evolved somehow, to become at least more accessible to us. No one aboard Inconvenience has yet observed any sign of this. They know... it is there, like an approaching rainstorm, but invisible. Soon they will see the pressure-gauge begin to fall. They will feel the turn in the wind. They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part the sky. They fly toward grace."

End.

Where We're At: Part 4.20: Against the Day

2009-07-20T13:56:00.000-04:00

Lew, Merle

Lew has a swanky office in LA (he came back to the US after the war); his assistants are movie extras. He's been drinking.
Chester Perkins comes to Lew's office--his boss, Tony Tsangarakis, who has a club (bar/music/dance) sent him. Lew had worked for Tony during the Syncopated Strangler case. Back then, Jardine Maraca, the house band's singer had been the roommate of one of the Strangler's victims, Encarnacion; Jardine had left town and gone to Santa Barbara and now has called Tony to tell him that her Encarnacion isn't dead but someone's after her (Jardine) now.
Lew goes to Jardine's shabby hotel room; she's checked out, but he calls one Emilio, who's a seer who reads toilet bowls. Emilio reads an address which he gives to Lew--it's bad news, lots of bodies.
Meanwhile, Merle Rideout has been frantically calling Lew; Lew agrees to meet Merle and sends one of the girls to drive by the address.
Before the war, Merle had randomly run into Luca Zombini, who was painting special effects at a studio. Merle sees Luca and Erlys, who filled him in on how well Dally was doing in London. Merle has forgiven Erlys. Merle became a friend of the family.
Merle and Roswell Bounce meet with Lew. They use their machine on a photo of Jardine Maraca; they see her driving around LA somewhere and going to a motel (not the one she'd been living at).
Roswell explains that their machine can also look at photo subjects' pasts--such as who killed a photographed corpse. (Except that unless they do something exactly right the past they see can diverge from what actually happened.) This reminds Lew of bilocation. (Meanwhile, Lew will protect Merle and Roswell, whose invention threatens the movie studios.)
Lew goes to the address Emilio gave him and Lake answers the door. Lake and Deuce had regularly seen the dead girl, Encarnacion, at Hollywood orgies ("I believe it's a soft g but that's the idea")--she disappeared when the Strangler showed up. Deuce is working security for a studio. He's still anti-union, anti-Anarchist; the marriage is cold. Lew gets rude-ish with Deuce, who pulls a gun; one of Lew's girl assistants shows up with her gun and saves him.
Lake is vaguely unhappy; Deuce's been having dreams ("trying to awaken from his own life"). Either he dreams he wakes up next to a corpse or he actually does. He's questioned and released.
Lew goes to the motel he saw in the photo regression; there he sees a party of all the people (or people like the people) he'd once chased after; they're all survivors of some cataclysm; it's a reunion of outlaws and Jardine is there visiting her father. He tells her that's he's been hired to find her; she doesn't want to be found. She says that the killer is Deuce Kindred. She leaves town.
Lew later brings a photo of Troth, his wife from way back when, to Merle.
Merle runs a photo of Dally; she's broadcasting on the radio from Paris; he tunes in.

(page 1062, end of Part 4.)

Where We're At: Part 4.19: Against the Day

2009-07-20T13:06:00.005-04:00

The Chums

The Chums are independent now; like many affiliates, they've disaffiliated with the National Office. Also, they've expanded the ship considerably; they've got money now. Their income is mostly from investments and advertising now, not so much from missions.
Ksenjia is now flying with them.
There's a massive updraft over northern Africa. They go there and almost crash into Counter-Earth. They're on Counter-Earth yet still on earth. ("[T[he boys could almost believe some days that they were safely back home on Earth--on others they found an American Republic whose welfare they believed they were sworn to advance passed so irrevocably into the control of the evil and moronic that it seemed they could not, after all, have escaped the gravity of the Counter-Earth.") They can look but they're not permitted to interfere.
In autumn 1914, a Russian agent who calls himself Baklashchan (it's an alias) visits to tell them that Padzhnitoff has been missing for months; the Russians can't find him--given the world situation, maybe someone in his own line of work can. The Chums know nothing about the European war or the Russian revolution; Baklashchan doesn't explain.
They look for Padzhnitoff. More and more of the sky is off-limits; they see explosions on earth' there are food shortages.
Turns out everywhere Chums had been, Padzhnitoff had been, too. Where they hadn't been, he wasn't. Were they hunting themselves? A ghost of their own dead selves?
They fly over Flanders; Miles sees the trenches and the war--"as if some blindness had abruptly healed itself".
Then over France they see Padzhnitoff and the new Bolshai'a Igra.
Padzhnitoff's crew has gone independent as well, no more connections with Okhrana. Instead of dropping bricks, they're dropping food, clothing, and medical supplies (for the influenza epidemic the Chums weren't aware of). They're fugitives from whoever's in power and based out of Switzerland now. The Chums agree not to turn in Padzhnitoff to whoever's looking for him.
The Chums travel with the Bolshai'a Igra to Geneva; both sides' wounded prisoners of war are travelling home through neutral Switzerland. There's a big black market, but also kindness of the local people to the war injured. Padzhnitoff passes his crew's extra work to the Chums. They start distributing cargo and are promoted to moving politically sensitive internees (in/from the Balkans and Siberia). Their involvement in the war began when they landed on neutral ground.
After the armistice, the Chums are receiving contract work again on their own (but they also continue doing relief and repatriation). They receive a job offer from California--lots of money do do unspecified tasks. Randolph apologizes to Padzhnitoff for leaving.
They have trouble negotiating the Rockies and end up over Mexico, where they fly into the Soladality of Aetheronauts, a pool of girl fliers. The five girls match up with the five Chums. And they arrive, with the girls onboard, in Los Angeles.
Crossing America they'd noticed how much more lit up it was now--"a triumph over night whose motive none could quite grasp." They talk about the early church teaching that Lucifer is the bearer of light.
The Californian check bounces and the lawyer who'd sent it doesn't exist. But they're in LA anyway.
Chick randomly runs into his father, Dick Counterfly.
Dick's got some massive machine that does... something. He introduces the Chums to two "elderly eccentrics," Merle Rideout and Roswell Bounce. They're being bothered by someone; he gives them Lew Basnight's card.
Merle and Roswell have invented a machine that reverses the fixed-in-time process of photographs--they can start with the still photo and "integrate" it and release it back into action, into life. It's based on integrating electricity, because electricity and light are similar, just different wavelengths. The machine uses Lorandite, from Macedonia--it's a crystal. Merle's on a mission to set free the images in photographs--his own photos and others'.

(p. 1040)

Chums of Chance Books: Read 'Em All!

2009-07-19T18:12:00.002-04:00

The Chums of Chance and the Wrath of the Yellow Fang ("the boys' unheralded but decisive activities in the Boxer Rebellion")

Where We're At: Part 4.18: Against the Day

2009-07-19T18:10:00.000-04:00

Frank; Stray

Scarsdale Vibe addresses a convention of owner types. "We will buy it all up,,, all this country,...[T]he good lowland townfolk will come up by the netful into these hills, clean, industrious Christian, while we, gazing out over their little vacation bungalows, will dwell in top-dollar palazzos befitting out station, which their mortgage money will be paying to build for us,,, [W]ho will be left anymore to remember the jabbering Union scum, the frozen corpses whose names... have gone forever unrecorded? who will care that once men fought as if an eight-hour day, a few coins more at the end of the week, were everything...."
Vibe sees an apparition (big, malevolent, face corroded) of his own destruction. He tells Foley that he looks forward to being "one of the malevolent dead."
Ewball tells Frank about the unquiet dead----it's about unfinished business, accounts to be balanced.
In Trinidad, Frank sees a big malevolent figure--it's Foley Walker. So Vibe must be in town too. Frank and Ewball argue all in subtext about who gets to kill Scarsdale (and who gets Foley instead). They flip a coin to decide.
Mother Jones is in town.
Frank's been carrying around Webb's cartridges all these years. They were for Deuce, but Scarsdale would be a decent alternative. It's now ten years since Scarsdale had Webb killed.
Frank comes up to Scarsdale with a gun; Scarsdale tells Foley to take care of it; Foley shoots Scarsdale--many times--he empties his gun. He's been waiting for this.
Ewball wanted more; Frank's satisfied that Scarsdale is dead.

Stray's doing what she can at the Trinindad tent city. They're surrounded by guns.
Jesse shows up.
The Colorado militia is using searchlights on the strikers' camp.
The Rev. Moss Gatlin is here as well.
It's getting more violent. Jesse and his Friend Dunn see a Death Special--an armored rail car that lets the riders shoot machine guns without even seeing who they're shooting at. Jesse finally understands that these grownups, the ones guarding the railcar, would kill him.
Frank runs into Stray in town; she's dressed as a nun for camouflage (literally--the gray habits blend with the landscape). Ewball's left. Stray invites Frank to come stay with them, meet Jesse.
Linderfelt, who Frank fought against in Mexico, is leading the militia here.
They'll leave (with Dunn), save their own lives. Frank sends Jesse and Stray to her sister's where they'd been living; he's staying to fight.

Where We're At: Parts 4.16-4.17: Against the Day

2009-07-19T17:26:00.000-04:00

Stray, Ewball, Mayva

Stray and Ewball are still together but they don't remember why anymore. Stray's got her own network of medical supplies, doctors, union hospitals, pharmacists, and she's getting food and medicine to where they're needed. She never realized that Ewball's motivation was just that he liked getting into trouble.
Ewball decides to bring Stray to meet his family, who he hasn't seen in years, in Denver. Ewball's been using rare, incredibly valuable stamps (link) on this letters home.
Mayva's working as the Ousts' housekeeper.
Stray and Mayva bond again. Mayva's mellowed; she's mostly pretty happy.
"[H]ow inevitable, right from the minute the first easterners showed up, would be the betrayal of everyday life out here, so hard-won, into the suburban penance the newcomers had long acceded to."

Frank

Frank has remained in Chihuahua even though the US government has warned all Americans to leave Mexico because of the revolution. He ends up fighting with an irregular unit on behalf of Pascual Orozco, in revolt against both the government and the Madero Revolution. They're winning battles and heading for Jimenez.
The land around Jimenez is famous for its meteorites. Frank recalls the piece of Iceland Spar from El Espinero that he used to see Sloat Fresno.
Frank helps his insurgents create a macquina loca-- a train loaded with dynamite and sent at high speed at the enemy. Just before he jumps from the lit-dynamite train, he wonders if this isn't the path that El Espinero foretold for him. But ultimately his side is losing: the other side has cannons; his does not. He realizes he has no real reason to be where he is, and leaves for Mexico City.
In Mexico City, Frank runs into Gunther, who's working in Oaxaca but stuck in the City because of the revolution. Gunther offers Frank a job mechanizing and maintaining the machines for his coffee plantation; Frank can train his crew. Besides, Gunther doesn't trust his foreman, and he really needs the help.
Frank sees the Monument to National Independence and recognizes the face of the angel. (It's Dally, we assume.)
Frank and Gunther return to Gunther's plantation.
In town, Melpomene tells Frank about cucuji, giant luminous beetles that the Indian women tame and name. These bearers of light are souls--Melpomene introduces Frank to his own, and Frank realizes that he's seeing the soul of everyone who's ever passed through his life. There's something here about light as indivisible and telepathy-- Melpomene and other Indians communicate instantaneously.
Frank has a vision that takes him back to his earlier vision with El Espinero. It takes him under a ceremonial arch into violence; he sees the Capital of Huerta coup. In real life, Frank's side has now definitely lost; Frank leaves Mexico rather than find out if someone's out to kill him.
Frank arrives in Denver and runs into Doc (Willis) Turnstone, who's married to Wren Provenance. Wren tells him that Turnstone also knows Stray--she's helping the coal strikers in the tent city outside Walsenburg. Frank heads there; Turnstone tells him that Ewball should be there as well.
Frank and Ewball meet; Ewball apologizes for messing with Stray, who Frank's been interested in forever. "But now she's all yours, pardner.....She always was." And he tells Frank where Mayva is. They travel to the Walsenburg tent city.

Where We're At: Part 4.15: Against the Day

2009-07-19T15:51:00.013-04:00

Reef, Yashmeen, Cyprian

Reef, Yashmeen, and Cyprian are following the tourist casino circuit and end up at the Anarchist spa , Yz-les-Bains."It might have reminded Reef of a mining camp early in the history of a silver strike, except that these solemn young folks carried with them an austerity, a penultimacy before some unstated future, a Single Idea, whose power everything else ran off of. Here it was not silver or gold but something else. Reef could not quite see what it was." Ratty's there, and so are people Reef recognizes from the tunnels and (different) people Yashmeen recognizes from London/the TWIT. Cyprian's people killing Theign felt like release for a lot of operatives, including Ratty (now calling himself Reg); he's quit. The group is working toward "[t]he replacement of governments by other, more practical arrangements." There are many former TWIT people here--betrayed by TWIT.
Ratty tells them that they, the Anarchists, have received a map (in code) of the Balkan Peninsula (where Austrians, generally, are profiting off people who've lived, worked, and died there for centuries). It shows, coded, plans for gas attacks?
Coombs de Bottle is at Yz-les-Bains as well. The rate of self-inflicted bombing casualties among Anarchists is high and he wants to instruct them in basic bomb safety (he initially tried this while he was still working at the War Office; he was fired).
The map ultimately came from Renfrew, via former students.
If a general European war happens, the Anarchists will be the ultimate losers as the war provides reason for governments to further centralize in self-preservation--that's what war does--centralized government is arranged to facilitate war, not peace.
There's Renfrew and Werfner's Interdikt field again, running across the Peninsula, waiting to be triggered. Yashmeen, pregnant and concerned for the future, wants to go disarm it. Cyprian had vowed never to return to the Balkans ("'Of the earth were alive, with a a planet- shaped consciousness, then the 'Balkan Peninsula' might easily map on to whatever in this consciousness most darkly wishes for its own destruction'") but Ratty's convincing him that he's their best bet. Besides, Cyprian's been looking or heading for some bigger purpose since meeting Danilo's cousin Vesna--real, not Danilo's hopeful hallucination-- in Serbia.
Professor Sleepcoat is researching why the Lydian mode (F to B natural, rather than B flat) in missing in Balkan church and folk music. He's also looking into Pythagoreans. Since 1900 there have been song-gatherers all over Europe "as if somehow the work had to be done quickly, before each people's heritage of song was somehow lost for good." They'll travel as song-gatherers.
This is Yashmeen's quest for transcendence.
They meet Professor Sleepcoat and his party at Sofia and the whole group sets out.
Reef, Yashmeen, and Cyprian's main task is to locate and disable the Interdikt line. The countryside is full of misdirection and showing the map makes townspeople shut up and be wary: "'You don't look for them... if they want to, they will find you. Better if they don't find you.'"
They randomly run into Gabrovo Slim, whose life Cyprian saved. Gabrovo offers to house the trio at his farm--it'd be better for everyone including the baby. The farm is in the Rozovata Donlina, Valley of the Roses (which runs east-west bet ween the Balkans and the Sredna Gora), which Cyprian thinks is as good a place as any to look for the Interdikt. Cyprian asks whether anything's going on there-- there have been people there who shouldn't be, Germans, with machinery, dynamos, cables. People who've tried to see what they're doing have disappeared.
They split from Professor Slipcoat. "Maybe that gap in the musical continuum, that silence, is a first announcement of something terrible, of which this structural silence is only an inoffensive metaphor."
At Slim's farm is his wife Zhivka, who breeds, grows, and talks to her roses.
Cyprian's aware that he's searching for something--not sex.
The baby, a girl name Ljubica, is born.
While Yashmeen's on the farm with the newborn, Cyprian and Reef are going out looking for the "Austrian minefield." Gabrovo shows them a hundred-foot tower with an antenna--it wasn't there before. Reef recognizes it as a Tesla rig (radio).
A crowd of motorcyclists show up at the antenna house--they're Theign's elite shadowing unit, RUSH, including Mihaly Vamos, who's worked closely with Cyprian in Venice. Vamos tells Cyprian that they owe him for getting rid of Theign. He explains that the locals call the Interdikt the Zabraneno; whoever installed it is gone, and it no longer belongs to anyone--the Germans and Austrians disavow it, the locals are terrified of it, the Turks check it monthly, and the Brits, who RUSH still work for, just make sure no one triggers it by accident, because no one knows how to dismantle it, It acts as if it's alive and it protects itself. They take Cyprian and Reef to the thing; Cyprian senses something else there. The building is abandoned and holds hundreds of canisters of phosgene. But phosgene isn't especially exotic anymore--it can be made easily now by using light. The weapon is light, not gas. Super-bright light can be projected as destructive energy, causes blindness and fear. But there are no light sources there. It's another code; Cyprian is furious.
They decide not to tell Yashmeen or Ratty's people what they've found--it's not what it was supposed to be.
The trio leaves for Varna, on the Black Sea, to follow rich gamblers; Yashmeen assumes that like her, the men are focusing on the baby rather than Interdikt.
They stumble on a rogue monastery on a hill; Cyprian is home. He stays.
Reef and Yashmeen mourn Cyprian as they make their way west toward the Adriatic. They don't see much point anymore in heading toward the Black Sea. They head toward Macedonia. The sunlight is pitiless. Macedonia declares war on Turkey; as Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgarians invade, Reef, Yashmeen, and Ljubica see their choices narrow. This is what they were sent to stop, and clearly they didn't, so Yashmeen regards the mission as a failure and the assignment as over. They just want to get out.
They're part of a vast array of refugees. They don't know what's going on further away; all Europe could be at war.
They hear machine guns for the first time as Turkey falls and the history of Turkey in Europe ends. As they move west with the troops they find themselves wondering "if the permission they had felt when Cyprian was with them, the freedom to act extraordinarily, had come from residence in a world about to embrace its end--closer to the freedom of the suicide than that of the ungoverned spirit."
They arrive at the lake at Ohrid. Before leaving, they send picture postcards of the war to everyone they know or knew, certain that none will arrive.
They'll head for Albania. Cyprian had warned them to stay away and there's some sort of revolution in the north, but it's winter in the mountains and there's only one road.
In Albania, everyone's shooting at everyone. They find themselves in a farm outbuilding; Ljubica makes friends with a dog. Later, Reef will learn that this dog is Ksenjia, Pugnax's mate; the Chums have been "invisibly but attentively" been watching over Reef and his family as they leave the Balkans; it's Ksenjia's task to steer then to safety without appearing to do so. And here are three Albanians, ready to shoot-- and there's Ramiz, whose life Reef saved in a Swiss tunnel. Ramiz's village takes them in.
At last they reach the Adriatic; a fisherman gives them a ride to Corfu where they spend the rest of the winter and the spring. The Compassionate take steps to re-establish contact with Yashmeen. And there's Auberon--he got their postcard and figured they'd come through Corfu, so he's been waiting for them. Auberon's deserted and the English think he's dead. He's with Umeki Tsurigane, who he'd met when she was posted to the Japanese embassy at Constantinople--Kit introduced them; he'd been working there as a bartender. Auberon tells Yashmeen that Shambhala turned out to be "not a goal but an absence. Not the discovery of a place but the act of leaving the futureless place where I was." (And in the process he arrived in Constantinople and met Umeki.)

(p. 975.)

Where We're At: Part 4.14: Against the Day

2009-07-16T04:19:00.003-04:00

Frank

Frank is still in Mexico; he's been injured fighting in the Revolution(?).
The shaman El Espinero sees Frank, wounded, and tells him that Stray is looking for him. And in walks Stray with a gorgeous man called Rodrigo. She's got him for a prisoner exchange but it's only partly business.
The next day Stray shows up again and has exchanged Rodrigo. Her new companion is Ewball Oust, who suggests she go back to arms dealing, and he and Frank tell her what they need.
The next day in walks Wren Provenance, the anthropologist.
Ewball and Stray fall for one another and eventually leave together.
El Espinero gives Frank hallucinogenic cacti. He has a vision of having escaped trespassers (lower-case "t") and defending against invaders.
A plane flies through; this is the first plane any of these people have seen; "[t]ownsfolk would reckon events for years to come as occurring before or after the airplane came."
Frank and Wren fall for one another.
Frank becomes invisible except, El Espinero tells Frank, to Wren--she'll always see him, Still, eventually she needs to get back to work and she leaves.

(p. 930)

Where We're At: Parts 4.12-4.13: Against the Day

2009-07-16T03:57:00.010-04:00

Dally; Crouchmas

Hunter and Dally arrive in London (from Venice). The Principesa had wanted to pimp Dally to some Italian nobleman and Dally doubted that Kit would return to Venice, so why stay?
Ruperta gets Dally set up in a bedsit while Hunter returns to the family house somewhere posher. Ruperta's vaguely jealous of Dally wrt Hunter even though she's not actually interested in him.
Ruperta introduces Dally to sculptor Arturo Naunt, who needs a new model for his AODs (angels of death) for soldiers' tombstones.
Meanwhile, Ruperta has been trying to make Hunter doubt Dally, and has heard from TWIT about Hunter's activities, and appoints herself as an anti-muse, trying to keep his work out of the public eye. But at a Vaughan Williams concert in Gloucester Cathedral she (literally) levitates to the ceiling on the music, and gets humility or religion or something She knows she's been horrible and needs to atone for every one of her bad deeds.
Hunter's paintings begin to show odd empty spaces, as if a person or thing is missing in the compositions. He won't tell Dally what it is that he won't show.
Dally randomly runs into Wilshire Vibe, who's producing in London and casts her in several of his shows. She becomes a big hit, taking bigger roles and attracting all sorts of attention.
Among Dally's new suitors is Clive Crouchmas, "into whose gravitational field Ruperta [a friend or acquaintance since childhood] had been able to steer the girl." Crouchmas has become some sort of powerful government spending expert, and since spending is intimately connected with arming, he's in touch with "noted death merchant Basil Zaharoff." Actually, it's because Zaharoff is so attracted to redheads that Crouchmas is hanging around Dally at all.
So Dally's being kept again, like in Venice--this time by Crouchmas.
Dally randomly meets Lew Basnight at a party; he tells her about looking for the twenty-two major arcana and tells her about number XVII, the Star. Lew is the go-between between people he won't identify (not TWIT) who want to know how well Dally knows Crouchmas-- they might be willing to pay a lot for certain information about his business dealings related to railway guarantees. Lew's presenting it as about gathering information about Turkish politics rather than a personal betrayal of Crouchmas, who's involved with both England and Germany.
Dally snoops in Crouchmas's papers in some large, looming, invisible building; detectives Crouchmas hired see her there. He decides to shop her to a harem. (Meanwhile, Zaharoff is trying to buy some Q-named weapon from Japan which the Japanese seem to be afraid of.) Crouchmas tells Dally he needs to go to Constantinople and invites her along; Lew okays it to her but warns her that no one trusts Crouchmas.
Lew wonders whether Dally is tarot number XVII, The Star.

Dally; Kit

Clive Crouchmas decides to use Dally as a bribe rather than sell her to a harem-- he's greedy more than he's out for revenge.
Imi and Erno, the men working for Crouchmas, have heard Dally described as having red hair. Zaharoff's girls are also redheads; and Imi and Erno confuse Dally with a Zaharoff girl and prepare, on the Orient Express, to kidnap her.
Meanwhile, Kit is on another train heading for Buda-Pesth and ultimately Venice and sees through the train windows what's happening to Dally and goes to help her. Imi and Erno let slip that Crouchmas hired them.
Kit and Dally flee together into Szeged. Kit's already been on the run since accidentally saving the life of the wrong man (an enemy of CUP, the Committee for Union and Progress) in Pera. (In Pera, Kit had just earlier randomly run into Viktor Mulciber, from Ostend. Mulciber tells Kit that engineers (which he believes Kit to be) are in huge demand for aircraft companies, particularly one specific company in Turin which he referred Kit to.)
Kit and Dally fall in love again; Imi and Erno go back to Buda-Pesth.
Kit and Dally decide that their best bet is to get to Buda-Pesth then on to Venice.
Dally tells Kit about Crouchmas, both the relationship and his discovery of her spying.

(p. 918!)

Where We're At: Part 4.11: Against the Day

2009-07-15T20:14:00.007-04:00

Cyprian; Yashmeen; Reef

Cyprian arrives back in Venice after having looked for (and not found) Yashmeen in Trieste. Vlado's associates tell him that Vlado is captured by Theign and has gone mad and is dangerous to everyone now; they're vowing revenge on his behalf. Cyprian agrees to look for Vlado; he feels responsible for Vlado having been caught. His new landlady tells him that Vlado is being held in the Aresenale.
Cyprian randomly runs into Ratty McHugh (who's gotten married). Ratty tells him that Theign is always protected by bodyguards. Cyprian wants to put Bevis on him, but Bevis is off being in love with Jacintha. Ratty sends Cyprian to see the Principe Spongiatosta, who works for Ratty's organization.
Theign had arranged an assignation between the Principe and Cyprian earlier but now the Principe, like Cyprian, wants to kill Theign ("who has since chosen a most dangerous path of vice and betrayal"). The Principe talks about power as an expression of collective will; the Americans are too young to understand. They discuss, theoretically, the idea that a foreign crown prince might hate Italy and when he comes to power would go to war to take back territory he believes to be his family's, and that this prince had people in Italy already; and that the problem for Italy is who could remain un-bought by the prince. Cyprian offers to ask around in Bosnia (the Usoks, Danilo's people) , where it's all about passion, not money.
Cyprian randomly runs into Yashmeen; she's with Reef and she looks rich.
Cyprian finds himself back to prostitution to raise money to go after Theign properly. He speaks to Danilo's cousin Zlatko. If Cyprian can corner him, they'll torture and kill him.
Cyprian finds that Theign had been "intimate" with Austrian crown prince Franz Ferdinand. Clearly in sending Cyprian to Serbia, Theign had intended that Cyprian be killed. Theign had been playing England off Russia. As Cyprian's field skills bettered, Theign's had deteriorated "from overindulgence in various luxuries."
Cyprian begins to follow Theign, invisibly--and then Theign sees him. Cyprian disappears as Theign goes to hurt him.
Cyprian's dreaming of Yashmeen.
The day of Theign's assassination arrives; the Usoks will do it. Cyprian thanks the Principe for his efforts in the matter; the Principe invites Cyprian to their masked ball the next week.
Theign is captured by the Usoks; they take out his eyes (and kill him, we assume).
Yashmeen sends a message to Cyprian that she wants to see him; he's jealous and emotional; she gives him Vlado's copybook. She seduces him, dominates him. They're in love, or something.
Cyprian attends the Principe's masked ball dressed as a woman; his wig is made from Yashmeen's hair that she'd had cut to disguise herself. Reef and Yashmeen attend as well. Cyprian tries to seduce Reef at the ball; Yashmeen takes them both to a room upstairs.
Cyprian's in love with Yashmeen; Reef's an amusement for her (and she for him). They're a threesome.
Reef tells Cyprian about having deserted Stray and Jesse; Cyprian thinks he should tell Yashmeen.
Reef dreams about Webb. Webb talks about small victories--his (we presume), not Reef's.
Reef, Yashmeen, and Cyprian take off to be with the Anarchists; despite themselves they become rich gambling They randomly run into Wolfe Tone O'Rooney in Monte Carlo. Wolfe's on his way to Barcelona, which is "about to explode, as it had been doing periodically, with Anarchist unruliness." Reef wants to come along; Wolfe tells him to wait for bigger game.
Something's changed between Yashmeen, Reef, and Cyprian.
Yashmeen discovers that she's pregnant with Reef's child.

(p. 891)

Reading Notes #9

2009-07-15T19:26:00.003-04:00

Vienna, Venice. Vlado. And the whole South African thing keeps getting mentioned. Are we still in Vs? Given that we're already got Vienna, is there a wrestling bear somewhere close by?

Where We're At: Part 4.10: Against the Day

2009-07-15T19:15:00.004-04:00

Reef; Yashmeen

Reef drifts around Nice and randomly runs into Flaco. Flaco ran into Frank in Mexico, where he's selling guns and ammo; Frank sends word that he "got one of them". Flaco tells Reef that Mexico is ready to explode and Reef should come with him back there. Reef's at loose ends in Venice; since he split from Ruperta, he's got no information on Scarsdale Vibe--and his heart hasn't been in it "since [his] chilly parting with Kit".
Reef's defending his newfound like for nice cafes to Flaco when a bomb hits. They tend to the wounded until the police arrive; they're both injured.
Reef takes Flaco to Professor Pivoine, "sort of a neighborhood couturier of flesh wounds." After being patched up Reef sees Kit--he tries to apologize and Kit says it's alright, nothing he himself wouldn't have done. "What the fuck are you talking about? he struggled to say, I did everything wrong. I ran away from my baby son and the woman I loved."
Reef's kind of avenging Andrea Tacredi's death as well.
Meanwhile, Vlado had given Yashmeen a "greens schoolboy's copybook" with field notes that she was to bring with her to Venice; they travel to Venice together.
Reef returns to Venice, and runs into Pino and Rocco. Their manned torpedo has grown in size and been converted into a small submarine which they've named Il Squalaccio.
At an underground (resistance?) bar, Reef, who's out with Pino and Rocco, randomly runs into Yashmeen. Austrians are following either Pino and Rocco or Vlado and Yashmeen. There's a shoot-out; Vlado is hit and captured. Pino and Rocco tow Yashmeen and Reef, in Yashmeen and Vlado's boat, to safety. Yashmeen explains that Theign is after her/them--even though in theory Austria and Britain are on different sides--it's not official. Pino and Rocco exit.
Yashmeen and Vlado had been staying in Trieste; that's not safe now, so Reef shelters Yashmeen in a room in Venice. While Yashmeen cleans up, Reef heads out and hears gossip that the shootout was some outlaw hero down from a mountain stronghold; Vlado is being held in the Arsenale. He comes home to find her half-naked; she seduces him.
Yashmeen has her hair cut and bleached to hide from the Austrians.
When the Campanile collapsed, power in Venice migrated to the campanile of San Francisco dellaVigna, near the Arsenale. Vlado's being held in the Arsenale; Theign has an office there. Theign offers to trade Yashmeen for information.
Yashmeen hears about a shootout at the Arsenale; she explains to Reef the Law of Deterministic Insufficiency. Yashmeen begins to read and figure out the copybook Vlado left with her. She still misses Vlado.

(p. 863)

Reading Notes #8

2009-07-15T18:37:00.002-04:00

GOTSE? How many readers read this one as goatse?

If you'd tell me that Pynchon wrote this whole storyline just to be able to put goatse in the book, I'd believe it. I'm massively impressed.

(p. 845)

Where We're At: Parts 4.8-4.9: Against the Day

2009-07-15T15:50:00.013-04:00

Cyprian; Yashmeen

When Austria announces that they're going to annex Bosnia, Theign sends Cyprian (from Vienna) there. He can bring Bevis along. He gives them a ridiculously tiny map; Bevis sees that as evidence that he knows they'll be killed before they'd need to use it.
Yashmeen find the dress shop closed, and she's locked out of her apartment; she's being chased out of town. Cyprian thinks it's dangerous for her in Vienna and she needs to leave.
Ratty meets Cyprian in Graz (Austria). Ratty's people think Theign is too close with the Austrians. Ratty warns Cyprian that where he's being sent is dangerous; he'd intervene if he could. He warns Cyprian that Theign is a danger to him (Cyprian). Cyprian asks Ratty to have someone watch out for Yashmeen and mentions that he's considering bringing her to Trieste; Ratty recommends Vlado Clissan (he's in Cyprian's organization and he hates Theign) there to watch over her.
Theign tells Cyprian that his shop won't or can't help Yashmeen; the Okhrana are interested in her and they need to be friends with Russia. Cyprian reminds him that they had an agreement. In a lovers' quarrel, Theign offers to let him out of the agreement; Cyprian declines.
Cyprian tells Yashmeen about Okhrana and Theign; Theign might know where she is. But Yashmeen, not Theign, is the love of his life. Cyprian tells her that Vlado will be in touch. They part.
Vlado and Yashmeen meet; they become lovers; she falls in love with him; he cheats on her.

Cyprian, Danilo

Cyprian is on the John of Asia, heading for Bosnia. Bevis will come onboard at Pola, Austria. Among the other travelers is Jacintha Drulov, who's probably a spy (and traveling with an older woman, Lady Quethlock, who she's claiming is her aunt). Bevis falls in lust with Jacintha. Bevis flirts with Jacintha by explaining the AppliedIdiotics school of spying; he's actually pretty clueless aside from the decryption stuff and may not understand that Jacintha's a spy.
Cyprian and Bevis arrive in Sarajevo. It's lovely, but there is the occasional explosion.
Danilo Ashkil is a Turkish Sephardic Jew. ("[I]n Bosnia the fez was like the veil, an emblem of submission, and wearing it one of the costs of doing business"). He speaks tons of languages and he trains spies who'll be working in the Balkans. Cyprian and Bevis are instructed to see him to safety--they'll bring him to Trieste.
Danilo finds that Cyprian lacks a proper sense of time ("I know it is difficult for an Englishman, but try for a moment to imagine that, except in the most limited and trivial ways, history does not take place north of the forty-fifth parallel. What North Europe thinks of as its history is actually quite provincial and of limited interest." ) and posits that looking at things from a Constantinople-centered world, the war between Turkey and Russia (and the Treaty of Berlin which ended it) is the pivotal event of the 19th century.
Danilo says he'll need a weapon for the escape; Bevis says they should see the Black Hand--which makes Cyprian wonder whether Bevis has been sent by Theign to spy on him, Cyprian, for Theign.
Cyprian runs into Misha and Grisha. He thinks they still want to kill him for the Khautsch thing; they don't because no one would pay them for it. They tell them that Khautsch is somewhere in the area. (He'd been expected to commit suicide in Vienna and instead had shot his way out.) Blackmail, even for sexual preferences, is dead. Khautsch randomly walks into the cafe he's looking shabby. Cyprian wants to follow him (or maybe just talk to him) but Khautsch ditches Cyprian.
Danilo tells Cyprian that the posting in Serbia is a set-up; his English employers have shopped him to the Austrians as a supposed Serbian agent; the Austrians will kill him. Cyprian should regard himself as owing England nothing anymore and should flee for his life.
Cyprian, Bevis, and Danilo (he's feeling in danger as well) flee.
Bevis disappears off a train within their first two weeks running and still in Bosnia. Cyprian forces Danilo to get off the train with him to search for Bevis. They pose as Serbian agents and meet Black Hand agents Batko and Senta, who tell them to stay off trains because the Austrians are looking for them.
As autumn progresses, Cyprian and Danilo travel on foot, then, heading for the coast (?) to catch a boat out. They get shot at, and run; they're in the mountains. One night they see odd lights everywhere and a solitary figure in the distance.
Danilo falls and breaks his leg; Cyprian uses a rifle as a splint and they make their way to a small village where Danilo can heal. Cyprian mothers Danilo; it's a different kind of desire. They make their way through Serbia and wait for the mountains to melt.
They travel through Macedonia to Danilo's home town, Salonica. It's in Macedonia, which Greece, Russia, Turkey, and Bulgaria all want to control. (Salonica is the Greek city Thessaloniki.) The city's caught between the Austrians and the Turks. Cyprian meets Danilo's cousin, Vesna.
Russia annexes Bosnia, with German approval.
Danilo shows up one day with Gabrovo Slim, a Bulgarian. (The Greeks want to exterminate the Bulgarians.) He's in danger because the Greeks think he's a Macedonian revolutionary, which he is. Gabrovo and Cyprian trade clothes, and Danilo and Cyprian send Gabrovo on to Constantinople; he's to find Khalil at the spice bazaar when he gets there.
Cyprian leaves for Trieste; Danilo, whose home is Salonica, stays.
As Cyprian travels on ships toward Trieste, he randomly gets a train to Cetinje, Montenegro. There he meets Bevis, who had run off with Jacintha and been there all winter.

(page 848)

Where We're At: Part 4.7: Against the Day

2009-07-15T14:58:00.009-04:00

The Event

The Chums are ... somewhere. Before the Event the town looks muddy and deserted; after the Event ("ripping apart the firmament over western China"), it looks cleansed and new and they know it's Shambhala. But the burst of light that un-hid Shambhala un-hid the Inconvenience at the moment (only that moment) the Event occurred, as well ("tor[e] the veil separating their own space from that of the everyday world").
The Chums arrive at the site of the Event shortly after the Bol'shaia Igra does; Lindsay says it was the Trespassers.
Vanderjuice, in Tierra del Fuego, messages the Inconvenience that everything there went chaotic--"gravity itself for a moment simply vanished." Vanderjuice relays the rumor that the Event was caused by an error in some kind of something Tesla was attempting to beam to Peary, in the Arctic. Tesla has abandoned his laboratory since Morgan abandoned him.
The Chums meet with the Bol'shaia Igra. Padzitnoff wants to know why they didn't tell him/them sooner about the Trespassers; he's known since Venice and might have helped despite official (national) issues. The Russians want to believe the event was caused by the Japanese, or at least the Chinese. The Chums don't know what the American government thinks, because they no longer work for them; they've gone out on their own. Chick is bothered that Padznitnoff is communicating on the wireless without encryption.
The event has changed the world as the Chums see it. Siberia is crossed by a network of rails , birds have vanished, huge modern cities have appeared. The sky is crowded with cargo balloons of all shapes and sizes, each tethered to its own piece of rolling-stock moving on its own track.
News of the event radiates out. ("Was it Tchernobyl, the star of Revelation?... Was it... the general war which Europe this summer and autumn would stand at the threshold of, collapsed into a single event?")

Dally is in Venice and is getting over Kit and working as a prostitute? Someone threatens her that he'll come for her that night, but that night never happens--it's light all night.

In Trieste, Cyprian ("no longer entirely welcome in Venice") meets with newly-arrived cryptographer Bevis Moistleigh who's trying to decrypt messages about.. .something. All he's gotten so far is the Albanian word for disaster. They're both working for Theign; Bevis wonders why Theign has him decoding stuff from Italy, who's supposed to be an ally, and in German, because Germany isn't. Bevis wonders if the code is (or is related to) some kind of Crusade. They come out of the office into a weird light.

Reef meets back up with Ruperta in Marienbad, but neither one much cares and she leaves. Reef moves on to touring the spas; he's claiming to have Railway Brain. The spa doctors know he's not sick but because he's a paying customer, they don't say anything. The Event happens and he understands "from the overhead voice--'Really Traverse you know you must abandon this farcical existence, rededicate yourself to real-world issues such as family vendetta, which though frowned upon by the truly virtuous represents even so a more productive use of your own precious time on Earth than the aimless quest to get one's ashes hauled...'"

Yashmeen is in Vienna, working in a dress shop; Noellyn walks in. They're out to dinner (after sex) and it's not getting dark.

"It went on for a month.... As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded... most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility, and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day."

(p. 805)

Where We're At: Part 4.6: Against the Day

2009-07-15T12:48:00.009-04:00

Padzhitnoff and the Bolsha'ia Igra

The morning of 30 June 1908, there's a "heavenwide blast of light." For miles around, tree trunks are bleached white. There was a huge sound, as well as light and heat.
Padzhitnoff, of the Bolsha'ia Igra, has been spying for the Russian secret service (Okhrana).
It's a time of pogroms and terror and blood; God has abandoned Russia.
Padzitnoff instructs Ofitser Nauchny Gerasimoff to investigate the event--he's been instructed, in turn, by Okhrana, who believes that it may have been man-made and wants to know the weapons implications.
Other crew members are Gennady, Pavel Sergeievitch, Bezumyoff.
They speculate that the event was so intense that the expected crater got displaced in time rather than space. So there could be a hole in the earth no one can see. Maybe it was an artifact of repeated visits from the future. Padzitnoff wonders whether it was a test of some new missile gone awry and therefore never to be admitted actually happened.
Meanwhile, Kit and Prance: Suddenly everything turned red, then orange as the explosion arrived. It's like when they passed through the Prophet's Gate? Kit thinks whatever it is is by Vanavara; Prance's remit was political, which he believes this isn't.
And then the drums began, like thunder or like whatever it was that happened.
Prance is being mistaken for a Japanese spy and is being shot at.
Kit wonders whether the event was caused by the discharge (intentional or un) of the Quaternion weapon he'd turned over to Umeki Tsurigane.
Stuff from the Tierra Del Fuego, directly opposite Siberia on the globe, is showing up in Siberia.
Reports are made of a mysterious figure walking through the aftermath. Maybe it's Magyakan, who hasn't been seen since the event.
And gradually the event receded and normalcy returned.
White reindeer Ssagan talks to Kit and convinces his (own) herders that Kit needs him as a guide. He brings them to Tuva, on the border of Mongolia, and leaves. The Tuvan throat singers are in two states at once, like a shaman. Prance believes they've arrived at the heart of the earth--which Kit says would ordinarily have been the reason for the journey, but since the event, who knows? Are Auberon and all still even there?
Prance detects the Inconvenience above them and is invited onboard the ship.

Kit

Meanwhile, Kit is with a band of brodyagi, former hard-labor convicts.
Kit comes upon the trailway line that's to link the Trans-Siberian and the Taklamakan.
Kit comes upon an exploring party that includes Fleetwood Vibe (looking for the Tuva-to-Taklamakan railway which may or may not exist; it may be what Kit's been seeing), who tells him that Scarsdale's gone mad as a result of something that happened in Venice. Colfax has left the nest and is pitching professionally.
Or is Fleetwood looking for Shambhala? Kit says he may have been there--Tannu Tuva. Fleetwood sensed other hidden cities that are grouped around the 30 June event site near Krasnoyarsk.
Fleetwood dreams of the fallen thing that the Voromance Expedition had. And Kit's gone.

(page 792.)

Where We're At: Parts 4.4-4.5: Against the Day

2009-07-12T20:09:00.015-04:00

Kit, Auberon

Yashmeen writes to Auberon (and sends the letter via Kit) that TWIT is no longer acting in her interest; they're not protecting her and they're not telling her what they have planned for her. They're leaving Switzerland and about to head for Buda-Pesth where she foresees danger and sorrow. They're still after Shambhala. ("[L]ike those religious charlatans who claim direct intercourse with God, there are an increasing number at the TWIT who presume a similar intimacy with the Hidden City; and who, more disturbingly, cannot separate it from the secular politics of present-day Europe." At Gottingen, she was useful to a group of Bolsheviks; the Russia-England alliance makes her useful to British intelligence; she doesn't know why TWIT wants her. "It is as if I possessed, without my knowledge, some key to an encrypted message of great moment, which others are locked in struggle to come into control of." She wonders about who he's been serving all this time. She dreamed about him last night--he said he wasn't what she's imagining him to be. She dreams (or has visions of) The Compassionate.
Kit travels by steamer and mostly by train (the Trans-Caspian railroad) across Russia and eventually ends up in Kashgar.
Kit meets Auberon Halfcourt and tells him that he believes that Yashmeen's being manipulated into breaking from TWIT--which would also be why she was removed from Gottingen. Auberon is living well in Kashgar; he's neither lost nor in need of rescue.
Auberon's Russian counterpart is Colonel Yevgeny Prokladka. His staff, all in exile from points further west, control vice in the city. Klopski runs surround movies (?); Zipyagin controls prostitution; Chiungiz is his aide. Years ago Volodya had planned to use the Bol'shaia Igra to steal a huge jade statue.
Mushtaq reports to Auberon that the Bol'shaia Igra is over west Taklamakan, "where its mission is obvious to the lowest camel-thief." Auberon replies that they can't exactly shoot the balloon out of the sky.
The local prophet, the Doosra, thinks it's his destiny to control all of north Eurasia; he's armed; remote outposts on the trading route are falling to him(?). So, add a local power to England, Russia, Japan, China, Germany, and Islam who all were concerned with the area.
The Doosra's representative asks Auberon (for England) to give the city to them.
Auberon and Prokladka commiserate that the region will belong to Islam; neither Russia nor England can fight successfully for it.
Mustaq had left Auberon when he rescued or kidnapped Yashmeen years ago.
Lt. Dwight Prance is a Renfrew scholar who's there to do something with the Chinese. Someone will perform in some strange tongue and mesmerize them all so that by the time anyone can act it will be too late.
Kit and Auberon talk. Auberon can't get back west; his being in Asia isn't his own choice. Auberon sees Kit as lost, so why not use him to establish relations with the Tungus (as in Tungu reindeer dance, from the Chicago expo) living east of the Yenisei--he's not been expressly forbidden by headquarters to do so. Kit agrees to go, and Prance will go with him.
Auberon arranges for Kit to have an audience with the Doosra; Kit's to report back.
The Doosra speaks fluent English with a "University-nitwit" accent.
The Doosra says that Kit should seek out his (the Doosra's) master in the north and he will answer Kit's questions; Kit should come back and relay the answers to the English and the Russians. The Doosra is sending his henchman Hassan along for the journey, as protection.
After poring over Yashmeen's letter and feeling unworthy, Auberon takes off into the mountains somewhere and arrives weeks later in Bukhara looking for a guide to Shambhala (as have been many Germans lately).

(page 767)

Kit
I don't get this section at all.

Kit would not understand until he saw Lake Baikal why it had been necessary to travel there "and why, in the process of reaching it, penance, madness, and misdirection are inescapable."
(Prance doesn't go to Baikal; he stays behind in Irkutsk.)
Hassan tells Kit that he's (Kit has) already spoken to the Doosra's prophet--and there's Baikal, "part of a supernatural order included provisionally in this lower, broken one." Kit realizes that he should have started the journey through the Tushuk Tash, the arch; Hassan, who calls it the Prophet's Gate, disappears.
The journey had begun by heading for the Tushuk Tash. The arch/gate is continually crumbling, "shedding pieces of itself from so high up that by the time they hit the ground they'd be invisible, followed by the whizzing sound of their descent, for they fell faster than the local speed of sound."
As Kit passes through the gate he's overwhelmed by a wave of sound, a vision. He dreams of this moment repeatedly as they journey. The last time he dreams it, a voice he should know tells him "you are released."
Once past the gate, Kit, Prance, and Hassan travel along the silk road, one oasis to the next. "[T]his space the Gate had opened to them was less geographic than to be measured among axes of sorrow and loss."
Hassan gathers wild-growing marijuana to use for trade.
They (Kit and Prance; Hassan took off at Lake Baikal) arrive in Irkutsk and it looks and feels like the San Juans, a mining town, to Kit. Kit's instructions from Auberon are to see Mr. Swithin Poundstock, a British nationalist in import/export. Poundstock's minting his own coinage, using old Chinese coins and black-market-but-real coin stamps to create British gold sovereigns. He shows them a map of eastern Siberia and shows them where they'll be operating--"the three great river basins east of the Yeniusei--Upper Tunguska, Stony Tunguska, Lower Tunguska." They're populated by clans that have been at war with one another forever.The key regional figure, moreso than even the Doosra's superior, is the shaman Magyakan, who's active in the Lower Tunguska tribe (Illimpiya).
They arrive in Yeniseisk and start looking for Magyakan.
Prance explains that differences in the major religions are nothing compared to how the major religions align against Shamanism, everywhere. "Every state religion, including your [Kit's] own, considers it irrational and pernicious, and has taken steps to eradicate it." It's not okay with the religions for humans to "be in touch with the powerful gods hiding in the landscape, with no need of any official church to mediate it for them."
Prance is working for some organization in Whitehall.

( p. 778)

Where We're At: Part 4.3: Against the Day

2009-07-12T18:53:00.005-04:00

Venice.

Foley Walker returns to Venice from Gottingen and tells Scarsdale Vibe that Kit has taken off. Why? Foley thinks it's because Kit knows Scarsdale paid for Webb to be killed. Scarsdale wants to know when Kit knew.
Foley's feeling like Scarsdale's increased the humiliating tasks he's asking of Foley and is beginning to get irritated.
Reef and Kit watch Scarsdale diving (and Foley supervising) in the lagoon. They've been tracking him, waiting for a clear shot. Reef wonders whether Kit will follow through--he thinks Kit's had something else on his mind since the seance. Kit thinks Reef's talking like an anarchist--Reef doesn't deny.
Dally randomly runs into Kit and Reef (Kit introduces her to Reef); later she and Hunter Penhallow run into Reef with Ruperta and Algernon(?). Hunter and Pert are old acquaintances. Hunter arranges to have dinner with Pert at a cafe where he and Dally scrounge after rich people (not their place, at all).
The Principessa Spongiatosta, who Dally's staying with, has been meeting with Derrick Theign and other random people. Hunter tells Dally that the Princess is at risk but Dally will be fine if she's careful.
Kit feels that Venice is unreal and wonders whether Inner Asia will feel any realer. (Real numbers, unreal/irrational numbers.)
Dally offers to help Kit and Reef with whatever they're doing; they're conspicuous, she's not. If she doesn't know who they should be dealing with, she knows someone who does. Finally Kit tells her that Scarsdale Vibe killed Webb, and they're in Venice to kill Scarsdale Vibe. Dally pretty much knew this when she offered to help. Kit explains that moreover, something must have gone wrong in the States, because now Vibe's people are after him--that's why he left Germany. Kit's plan is to do the deed, then head for Inner Asia. Dally's kind of in love with him and feels like he's going to abandon her again--he says he'll come back but can't promise when. It also feels to Dally like Merle's craziness.
Ruperta leaves for Marienbad; Hunter goes along for part of the ride.
With Hunter gone, Dally joins forces with Kit and Reef. Vibe needs to be shot at close range so no one else gets hurt; Reef thinks Kit should do it, Kit thinks he'd be at risk from Scarsdale. Dally's getting impatient with the discussion and says that they're not the only ones looking to get to Vibe: "You're in Anarchist country, buckaroo. Sooner or later over here, they're bound to run out of royalty to shoot at and start lookin for more of the riffraff--politicians, captions of industry, so forth. And that's a list Scarsdale Vibe has been on for some time." Reef asks if there's really something already being planned.
Dally takes them to meet Andrea Tacredi, the artist and anarchist. He's upset because Vibe is buying up Venetian art, turning passion into commerce. He's been talking anarchism and assassination.
The Principessa takes Dally, who's mooning over Kit, to a big party where Scarsdale Vibe is also a guest. Reef and Kit are outside doing reconnaissance. Reef sees that Dally is in love with Kit; Kit doesn't. There's a huge storm and the city is flooded. A gunshot is heard as Vibe and Foley arrive. Tancredi is in the street looking out of place; he's carrying what he'd described as an infernal machine that would bring down Vibe; police or bodyguards hired by Vibe shoot and kill Tancredi. Vibe eggs on the police as they kick at the corpse. He sees Kit.
Dally says that someone sold out Tancredi; she's mourning him. Kit has to leave (Venice and Dahlia because Vibe saw him). He promises to come back.
The moment that Vibe saw Kit was the moment Kit realized he had no "future" (in the material success sense). He's running now not for anything or anyone (God, Yashmeen, Vectorism) but to save his own life.
Reef blames Kit for not killing Vibe at the party. He walks away "soon absorbed into a mobility of hundreds of separate futures, whose destiny could not be told in any but a statistical way. And that was that."
Kit leaves on a steamer for Trieste.

p. 747.

Where We're At: Parts 4.1-4.2: Against the Day

2009-07-12T16:17:00.008-04:00

Cyprian Latewood

Cyprian, who we last saw mooning after Yashmeen at Cambridge, is posted to Trieste to monitor the docks and emigrant traffic to America. (Trieste and Fiume have become destinations for Austro-Hungarians who want to head west.) He's tracking who goes out, who comes back, and so forth.
He'd previously been in Vienna, where Russians Misha and Grisha recruited him for a secret (must tell no one) something for someone they don't identify.They leave messages for him scheduling appointments at various locations; they're watching him. Finally he's summoned to an address in the Jewish quarter, where he's blindfolded, handcuffed, and caned by the Colonel. (who?) These assignations continue.
Cyprian randomly runs into Ratty McHugh, his old school chum. He assumes that Ratty is working for some part of the British foreign service ("which Desk") and asks him to get him out of Vienna. Ratty needs to know exactly what kind of trouble Cyprian is in; he's in contact with people who might be able to help. ("[I]t isn't's if one starts off intending to live this way... 'Oh yes planning, you know, to seek a career in sodomy.'")
Ratty arranges an appointment with Derrick Theign. Someone from Misha and Grisha is watching Ratty; Derrick plays it as a seduction.
Derrick ditches the tails and sends him to Trieste. (Ratty wanted to return to England--but that's not safe, and actually he might be better off even further east than Trieste.) Then he (Derrick) sets up Grisha--he'll be arrested for having led Cyprian, as his ward, into an immoral life. Cyprian is told that the Colonel (an expert in south Slavic politics) knows where he's being sent (or where he is before he goes?). Derrick's shop has the Colonel arrested and Cyprian is free to go, owing (and now working for) Derrick.
Derrick and Cyprian are moved to Venice--"It was occupied a fateful geopolitical cusp ever since it lay at the ancient intersection of Western and Eastern empires--as it still does in our day, though the empires have mutated around it".
Derrick's a senior lieutenant in the navy, in the Naval Intelligence Department. He's nominally in Venice to look into stolen engineering documents. He explains that the Russians, meanwhile, have an aerial surveillance program going, in ships that are invisible.
Derrick and Cyprian become lovers?
Derrick's people lose track of Misha and Grisha.
Derrick's actually in Venice to set up RUSH (rapid unit for shadowing and harassment), a crew of motorcyclists who will be able to maintain communication when war closes off telegraphs and trains, etc. Cyprian's to be one of the motorcyclists.
Derrick sends Cyprian back to Vienna. Cyprian's of interest to British, Russian, (and Italian?) operatives all of whom want him dead.

Cyprian returns to Vienna
The Colonel was Max Khautsch.
Cyprian meets Miskolci (a vampire who had worked for Theign; the vampires have their own telephone exchange in Buda-Pesth, which is of use to Theign); Dvindler, who Theign recruited in the baths (spas), Yzhitza, a whore. They all work or worked for Theign.
There are many Socialist demonstrations going on.
Cyprian randomly runs into Yashmeen. She's working at a dressmakers, apparently through some workings of TWIT. She complains that she's being watched, by someone local and also by Russians. She's scared. Cyprian says the Okhrana can be bought but the Austrians (Kundschaftsstelle) might be more of a problem.
Cyprian takes Yashmeen's problem to Ratty McHugh.
Ratty sees Yashmeen's problems relate to the "Shambhala Question" and thinks that Auberon should have been pulled back years ago.
Ratty and Cyprian and Yashmeen meet. She tells them that she'd been contacted by Germans at Gottingen, and had been sent to Buda-Pesth where TWIT(?) was investigating the 'parapsychical.' (The Russians who've been following her are either part of the Anglo-Russian alliance or socialists.) Some of these Buda-Pesth people believe that they can predict the future. Ratty wants to know why they all left Vienna when Yashmeen did--did someone foresee something? Yashmeen explains that they were scared and no, it had nothing to do with Yevno/Monsieru Azeff, "notorious for blowing up Romanoffs whilst shopping his comrades". Yashmeen doesn't know why they left; apparently whatever they brought her to Buda-Pesth (where Mme. Eskimoff, Swome, agent Lajos Halasz, the Cohen, and others had been bickering) to do, it became clear that she couldn't.
Cyprian returns to Venice and asks Theign to help Yashmeen.

page 723.

Where We're At: Part 3.18: Bilocations

2009-07-09T17:19:00.005-04:00

Lew Basnight

Lew runs into Prof. Renfrew at the theater in London. He's with Max Khautsch. Whoops, that's Werfner, not Renfrew. They look a lot alike. Why is Werfner where he should not be? "[s]ome symmetry was being broken."
Lew reports to Nookshaft, the Cohen, that Werfner's in London. Nookshaft's not surprised and kind of suggests that it might be nice if Lew would kill him.
Lew talks to Nigel and Neville about the resemblance between Renfrew and Werfner and realizes that they're just playing the role of twit, and that Renfrew and Werfner are the same person--he's got some paranormal power to be in at least two places at one time. He also realizes that everyone at the TWIT knew, except him; he was played. he feels released from some sense of obligation to TWIT.
Lew talks with Dr. Otto Ghloix, who's visiting from Switzerland, about bilocation. Ghloix says it's a manifestation of a "deep and fatal contradiction" within the person. And who better than a fallen geographer who might have found Shambhala, found salvation for mankind?
Is work just penance? "[T]o live in the world [is] to do penance.... Being unable to remember sins from a previous life won't excuse you from doing penance in this one. To believe in the reality of penance is almost to have proof of rebirth."
Lew goes to Cambridge to see Renfrew who talks about how the railroads are the key to the Balkans--look at the map from a distance. Renfrew tells him that the Gentleman Bomber is in Cambridge. Is that related to Werfner? At the cricket stadium, Lew either sees or doesn't see a mysterious armed man.
Lew talks to Dr. Coombs de Bottle to ask about carbonyl chloride--what the Gentleman Bomber uses.
The Grand Cohen suggests the Bomber might be a Messenger.
Suddenly everyone else has left town and Lew's left alone.
Lots of mail is being received with weird Swiss stamps, like what's on a letter from Yashmeen.
Lew leaves the TWIT.

end part 3. page 693.

Where We're At: Parts 3.16-3.17: Bilocations

2009-07-09T15:43:00.010-04:00

Reef

Reef and Flaco are working as tunnel dynamiters in Europe. The Austrian Alps are hot; Austria wants to be able to move troops south into Italy as it sees fit. There's also a big tunnel in progress between Brigue, Switzerland, and Domodossola, Italy. They' re running into problems there because there are hot springs where the tunnels should go.
The tunnel crews also include Nikos, Fulvio, Gerhardt, the opera singer, the Albanian (Ramiz), some of whom are "part-time Anarchists interested in furthering their chemical education."
Ramiz is on the run from an Albanian family revenge situation. There's talk about how revenge works there versus the (American) West.
Fulvio earlier met up with a Tatzelwurm--a snake with paws and sharp teeth; they live in the tunnels in Europe. Is the Tatzelwurm hell? Or are the dynamiters hell for the owners?
Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin happens to visit as part of the Euro-spa circuit. She's got Rodolfo as an (kept?) escort. Reef's sleeping with her again; she mentions that Scarsdale Vibe is buying up Renaissance art. He (Vibe) headed for Venice; Ruperta is as well.
Philippe is involved when Reef saves Ramiz from a Tatzelwurm; Ramiz now is obligated, by Albanian tradition, to repay Reef. There's something here about reflections, maybe? Light?
Reef leaves for Venice with Roberta. On the train going there, he has a visitation (or a vision) he still needs to avenge Webb; he needs to take out Scarsdale Vibe.

Kit and Yashmeen--and Reef

Kit and Yashmeen take the train to Switzerland
Yashmeen talks about the stranniki--underground men who felt a holy mission "ambassadors from some mysterious country very far away, unable to return because the way back was hidden." They're forced to wander the world seeking... something. She's one of them now--she had to leave Gottingen, didn't leave by choice. She's been expelled from the garden. She won't tell Kit why.
Yashmeen reconnects with the TWIT at a sanatorium at Lago Maggiore; Kit tags along. And whoa, there's Reef. Reef: "[b]e content that you held out longer'n me, at least." Kit: "Just stupid. Just slow. Can't believe how long it took me to see."
(Has Ruperta trained her spaniel, Moufette, to provide intimate services [to Ruperta]? Or did Reef just imagine it?)
Kit introduces Reef to Yashmeen.
Kit moves into the sanatorium where Reef and Ruperta are.
Reef tells Kit that Scarsdale Vibe is heading for Venice. They should kill him?
Madame Eskimoff shows up; she holds a seance and they talk to Webb, maybe. Reef calls it a con. She suggests that he try being the medium; he (with hanger-on Algie as the fourth) channels Webb: "I sold my anger too cheap." But what he doesn't say is that they should kill Scarsdale Vibe because Vibe had hired his (Webb's) killers. Reef doesn't know who he is any more; how did he sell out when in New Orleans he chose anarchism?
Kit dreams of Webb. He'd turned against Webb when he accepted Vibe's money for school. Vectors never would have been Kit's salvation. He needs payback.
Kit tells Yashmeen he wants to go to Venice; can she square it with Lionel Swome? Yashmeen says that getting her out of Gottingen was the main objective; Kit was convenient but isn't indebted. TWIT believes that Yashmeen owes her continued existence to them; they're taking her to Vienna and the Buda-Pesth, not her choice, for some sort of psychical research thing--she's to be the subject. He can write her care of her school pal Noellyn Fanshawe, who will forward letters.

(p. 677)

Where We're At: Parts 3.13-3.15: Bilocations

2009-07-05T23:38:00.008-04:00

Kit amd Yashmeen

Kit's credit line from Scarsdale Vibe has been cut off. ("'You have heard from them?' Had been all along, Kit realized--just wasn't listening.") Why had Scarsdale Vibe been so eager to let him go to Gottingen, anyway?
Otzovists, god-builders, are all over the university. "A new subset of heretics, this time against Lenin and his Bolshevists... focused on what they call 'the fourth dimension.'" They think Yashmeen knows how to travel in the fourth dimension. Meanwhile, TWIT wants Yashmeen back to London.
Actually, Yashmeen can travel in time--can step outside time.
Kit is worried that Scarsdale Vibe's people will be trying to kill him--whatever the payoff or deal was, it's ended. They see him as a threat or maybe have guessed how much he knows.
Yashmeen feels at risk as well, because of the Russian revolution.
Yashmeen offers to see whether TWIT would be interested in employing Kit.
Foley Walker is in Gottingen; Kit sees him. Foley appears, as an apparition, in Kit's room at night and explains that Kit knew things and didn't tell the Vibe Corp--Kit was dishonest. Now Foley's there because Scarsdale is curious how someone would react to a philanthropy in reverse.
After a chloral hydrate party, Foley finds Kit; Humfried, who had previously overdosed and was being brought to the hospital, hides Kit by getting him admitted to the hospital ("'Achtung, Schwester! Here another dope-fiend is!'") and then leaves.
Foley leaves town.
Dr. Will Dingkopf is one of the doctors at the (mental) hospital. He's obsessed by Jews. (Again, "what kind of name is ___".)
Ich bin ein Berliner wordplay-- a patient thinks he's a jelly donut. Turns out Yashmeen sent him, he's not nuts--he's Lionel Swome, TWIT travel coordinator, and this is the only way she could find to get in contact with Kit. Kit tries to escape and ends up sleeping by a fence. Yashmeen intervenes to get him released.
Yashmeen believes that her father, Colonel Auberon Halfcourt, is involved with the efforts to discover Shambhala.
Kit believes that for his own safety he needs to be out of Gottingen.
TWIT is sending Kit and Yashmeen to elope in Switzerland (she's in danger in Gottingen as well). They're to behave as newlyweds until they split up and head in different directions--Kit, eastward toward Inner Asia and Shambhala.
Sidney Reilly, Chong, recommended Kit to TWIT.
Kit's to meet with Auberon Halfcourt in Kashgar and get his report on what happened in Shambhala and report back to TWIT.
"As for what lies beneath those sands, you've got your choice--either Shambhala, as close to the Heavenly City as Earth has known, or Baku and Johannesburg all over again, unexplored reserves of gold, oil, Plutonian wealth, and the prospect of creating yet another subhuman class of workers to extract it."
Gunther, Yashmeen's boyfriend, is being sent to one of his family's coffee plantations in Mexico.

p. 636

Frank

Frank had intended to get back to chasing down Deuce but instead is again running arms in Tampico, Mexico with Ewball Oust. By chance they meet Gunther. Gunther tells Frank that Scarsdale Vibe has cut off Kit's funding and that Vibe and his henchmen are after Kit, who's fled Gottingen.
Ewball runs into an old acquaintance, then called Steve now called Ramon, who is down on his luck and willing to do "anything that's too crazy or dangerous" and invites Ewball, Frank, and Gunther to a party as his villa that evening. All the gringo attendees at the party are ready to flee Mexico at a moment's notice.
Frank asks Gunther for help wrt a shipment of semiautomatic weapons intended for the Mexican army; Gunther points him toward Eusenebio Gomez, who is acting as the sub-agent.
Gomez turns out to be Wolfe Tone O'Rooney, the Irish revolutionary who knew Reef. Frank tells Wolfe that he killed Sloat. They talk about Deuce and Frank says that he wouldn't be terribly surprised if Lake ends up killing him--"if all this time she was just playing the long game." Wolfe hits it off with Ewball, and Frank, Ewball, and Wolfe hang out.
By chance they run into Dwayne Provecho, from jail. Dwayne ratted out Frank and Ewball when they escaped (he was a plant), and he's got money now. He offers Frank and Ewball a consignment of Krag-Jorgensens. Ewball doesn't trust Dwayne but Frank takes the chance and heads off to Juarez for the deal.
In El Paso, Frank meets his contact for the arms deal, one E. B. Soltera--and it's Stray. She claims to be a go-between.
Frank tells Stray he's met Wolfe, and Wolfe has seen Reef (three years ago?) in New Orleans. Reef and Stray's son Jesse is staying with her brother and SIL? sister and BIL? , Willow and Holt.
Stray and Frank run into Hatch and a sidekick with pointy ears; Hatch threatens Stray; Ewball appears unexpectedly.
Frank's been having dreams about Webb.

p. 651

Reading Notes #7

2009-07-05T18:40:00.000-04:00

And here, p. 605, is another weird English food scene. I find the English foods thing weirder, in a deeply, deeply weird way, than the human-animal romances and sexcapades or the coprophilia.

Where We're At: Parts 3.11-3.12: Bilocations

2009-07-05T17:34:00.007-04:00

Kit

Is in Gottingen with fellow students Gottlob and Humfried. Yashmeen's there, too. Kit meets Yashmeen.
Yashmeen's out to prove Riemann's Hypothesis and she's feeling overly chaperoned.
Kit compares how people are pouring into town with a silver camp in Colorado.
They flirt; Yashmeen tells Kit about the TWIT and the "ghostly neo-Pythagorean cult of tetralatry or worship of the number four"
Gottlob and Humfried show up at Kit's room; trying to hide, Yashmeen opens a door that didn't exist before and finds herself at the base of the city's coordinate system -- "return to zero." This kind of thing has happened to her before.
Yashmeen explains to Kit that the political crisis in Europe maps into the crisis in (various school of) mathematics.
The (1905) Russian Revolution is going on, and Russians are fleeing to all over Europe.
Yashmeen is originally Russian; she was sold into slavery following a raid, and she sees her birth family in dreams.
Yashmeen takes up with Gunther von Quassel.
Gunther finds Yashmeen in Kit's room (with Humfried, as well) and challenges Kit to a duel. They end up talking math instead.
Among the Russians is someone Yashmeen recognizes from Cambridge -- Sid, who's calling himself Chong. Werfner notices him as well and regards him as a spy sent by Renfrew.
Meanwhile Kit begins to frequent the Applied Mechanics institute. He's interested in aerodynamics.

Lew Basnight

Is still in London at the TWIT.
Police Inspector Vance Aychrome of Scotland Yard comes to see him. Lew deals his (own?) Tarot cards and finds XII, The Hanged Man (and not XV, Renfrew and Werfner). The Hanged Man is currently Lamont Replevin, an antiques dealer. He's been selling a lot of stuff found by Germans in Inner Asia. Add to that that Sands was concerned about Shambhala and the Gas Office (communication by coal gas) is concerned about Replevin as well.
Lew gets called to the Grand Cohen's office. Nookshaft's term as Grand Cohen is almost done; he's happy to be going back to being Associate Cohen soon. He tells Lew that Replevin has come into possession of a map of Shambhala--which everyone is after. But, notes Nookshaft, the map makes no sense unless viewed through a paramorphoscope.
Lew picks the lock at Replevin's house (where the floor is "black floor-tiles, each surrounded by silvery grouting, some composite with that soft a shine to it") and finds Replevin hanging from the ceiling like the figure on the Tarot card listening to the daily gas broadcast (Lew tries to rescue him--oops). As a cover Lew explains himself as Gus Swallowfield, insurance underwriter for Pike's Peak Life and Casualty, and tries to sell insurance to Replevin. Replevin takes Lew up to his office, and Lew sees the map of Shambhala. He photographs it (purportedly photographing other stuff).
Chaos = gas.

page 614.

2009-07-05T16:27:00.000-04:00

Why am I so obsessed with writing these summaries? It's just not that tightly-plotted a novel. There are lots of connections that amount to "well, because." Why's Dally in Venice? Because. Why'd Bria come to visit her? Because. So why do I need to map the connections and cause-and-effects?

Because.

Where We're At: Part 3.10: Bilocations

2009-07-05T12:02:00.008-04:00

Dally

The Zombinis have been a big hit across Europe. They arrive in Venice and Dally decides to live there forever--it's what she's been looking for.
Vincenzo Miserere is the sales rep from the mirror factory on Isola degli Specchi. Luca is descended from a mirrormaker Niccolo Zombini, who escaped (hard to do then) from the Isola around 1660. At the mirror factory Professor Svegli shows Luca and Bria the master drawing for the paramorphoscope; apparently Niccolo brought one with him when he escaped. The paramorphoscope is similar to the device Luca's been using in his act--the one that produced doubled people. (The doubles are actually the original subjects, slightly displaced in time.) The doubles can't be eradicated-- they've all moved on with their own independent lives.
Dally earns a living doing magic tricks, card tricks. She meets English painter Hunter Penhallow (who we last saw stowing away with the Voromance Expedition) and becomes his agent and model. Hunter's seeking refuge from time, from the end of World War I. He's finding traces of consciousness of previous occupants of his cheap hotel room. (Dally's sleeping outside.) He tells her a story from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas--"It's redemption, isn't it, you expect chaos, you get order instead. Unmet expectations. Miracles." Winter's coming; Hunter arranges for Dally to room at the palazzo of the Principessa Spongiatosta, an acquaintance.
Bria comes to town to visit Dally.
Dally meets Hunter's artist friend Andrea Tancredi. He's been painting infernal machines, what is hell.

(p. 587)

Where We're At: Parts 3.8-3.9: Bilocations

2009-07-04T15:43:00.010-04:00

The Chums

Are in Brussels for the annual memorial service for General Boulanger; they have ground leave at Ostend, where they run into the Quaternionists-in-exile at the Grand Hotel de la Nouvelle Digue. (They last saw Quaternionists at Candlebrow, which was one of the Quaternionists few safe harbors during the Quaternion Wars.)
Most people no longer really see the Inconvenience; it's becoming invisible.
De Decker's shop has an electromagnetic monitoring station that's been picking up messages intended for the Inconvenience's Tesla rig (a power generator). They're conflating these messages with rumors of a Quaternist weapon which Piet Woevre has been obsessed by.
The Chums are getting intimidated by Pugnax's increasing ferocity; only Miles really communicates with him anymore.
During the undersand voyage, Miles was taken by a vision of the holy city, separated from them only by time, a separation which was becoming increasingly frail.
Miles sees one of the Trespassers--Ryder Thorn, who was also at Candlebrow-- on the ground is Ostend. Ryder arranges to meet with Miles and they take off on bicycles for Ypres (Flanders). Ryder tells Miles that the Trespassers know what will happen here ten years from now--it's his task to find out what Miles's people know. Miles claims to be only a cook for a bunch of balloonists--says he knows nothing. The Trespassers know that Miles was spying on them at Candlebrow; Miles denies it . Ryder explains that the Trespassers have the answer for time (and any study of time is ultimately about the human fear of mortality): "This world you take to be 'the' world will die, and descend into Hell, and all history after that will belong properly to the history of Hell...Flanders will be the mass grave of History... And that is not the most perverse part of it. They will all embrace death. Passionately." "The Flemish." "The world."
The Trespassers come from the future and have no choice but to come here. Time was (will be) ripped open here and they can't cross back.
Miles realizes that there's no technical knowhow behind the Trespassers' presence in his world-- it was a chance blundering on a shortcut enabled by whatever was going to happen at Flanders.
Miles explains to the Chums that the Trespassers aren't in fact immortal and can't provide immortality or eternal youth as they promise.

page 556. More than halfway through.

Kit

Arms tycoon Viktor Mulciber has been sent by Basil Zaharoff to Ostend to ask about the Quaternioneers (including Barry Nebulay, Dr. V. Ganesh Rao, Umeki Tsurigane, and Root; Kit has tagged along with Umeki) about the Qweapon. (Huh?) The weapon does something with time ("the fulfiller of the Trinity" [which could just mean the standard three dimensions]). Time is "the one force no one knows how to defeat, resist, or reverse. It kills all forms of life sooner or later." (Mulciber) Other arms dealers find the Quaternists as well.
Piet Woevre has beaten them all, bought from Edoard Gevaert--what he bought is "something in a sleek leather case, shaped exquisitely by northern Italian maskmakers to the exact facets of the shape within, a perfectly tailored black skin, a deployment of light among a careful clutter of angles, a hundred blurry highlights." Woevre wants to destroy the world.
Kit's in love (or lust) with Umeki. They're still in Ostend. So is Pleiade Lafrisee. Kit and Umeki run into Pleiade with Woevre. Kit thinks that Woevre is capable of killing via mayonnaise.
De Decker sends operatives, including Woevre, to the hotel to make mischief. Kit sees Woevre, assumes he's the target, and takes off. Pino and Rocco run into him and offer him a ride to Bruges on their torpedo. They get lost in the canals and suddenly there's Woevre shooting at Kit; Pino and Rocco are gone. Woevre's not sure why he's shooting--why not?
Woevre's been vaguely aware of the Inconvenience and he's seen the Chums on land. He knows he needs to take down the ship. He takes out the mysterious weapon he bought and tries to shoot... and sees a strange light and hears the voices of everyone he's ever killed. He ends up on his back; Kit helps him up; Woevre wants nothing more to do with whatever this weapon is and gives it to Kit. Woevre takes off and Kit hears shots.
Umeki has been fooling with the weapon. It's double refracting. (Any light entering becomes a pair of rays, one ordinary, one extraordinary.) Kit has a dream about the weapon's power and knows he has to give it to Umeki. He does; she goes back to Japan.

page 567.

Where We're At: Parts 3.6-3.7: Bilocations

2009-07-04T12:29:00.013-04:00

Dally and Erlys (and Kit Traverse)

Katie has an audition in NYC that Wilshire Vibe arranged.
Dally and Erlys and the Zombini family are in first class on the steamship Stupendica heading toward Europe.
Erlys recounts meeting Merle Rideout on her way home from burying her ne'er-do-well husband, Bert Snidell, broke and visibly pregnant. This is in Cleveland. Merle takes her in. They travel to keep ahead of winter; Merle does odd jobs. When Erlys took off with Luca Zombini, she was planning to come back for Dally, but Merle just took off again. Luca was the first real passion of Erlys's life.
Luca reminds Dally of Merle.
Also on the ship is Kit, who Dally met at the Wilshire Vibe party. He's on his way to Germany to study math; he's interested in Dally.
Kit's travelling first class but hanging out in fourth where he meets the other mathematician onboard, Root Tubsmith, heading for the University of Berlin to study with Fuchs, Schwarz, and Frobenius. Root specializes in fourth-dimensional geometry (Quarternions, which isn't taught at Yale) and studied under Manning at Brown.
Dally tells Kit she knew Frank in Colorado. Dally and Kit flirt. Dally knows that Frank and Reef had been looking for someone and someone was looking for Frank. Kit tells her that his brothers don't realize that he, Kit, is in it too (i.e., he's being bankrolled by Scarsdale Vibe).
Dally's half-sister Bria is interested in Kit's friend Root.
The Stupendica is really two ships in one. She's also the battleship Emperor Maximilian (Austrian). Root has been poking around and found shell-rooms-to-be, powder magazines, spaces for gun turrets, torpedos, and so forth.
Belowdecks, Kit and Root meet seamen including a stoker, O.I.C. Bodine.
The ship receives a telegraph--British and German battle groups are engaged off the Moroccan coast and a state of general European war should be assumed--and everything changes. The ship is transformed into an Austro-Hungarian battleship. (Luca: "[i]t's the old Liner-to-Battleship effect.")
Kit tries to leave belowdecks and is forced into working to load coal into boilers.The Chief Stoker is Oberhauptheitzer. They're off the coast of Morocco. Either the passenger ship was actually split away from the battleship or the passengers are hidden and Kit can't see them.
They're initially supposed to go to Tangier (Morocco), controlled by local warlord Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli but instead the captain heads for Agadir, "the Queen of the Iron Coast" (also in Morocco) because the passengers included a bunch of sequestered Germans who are being sent to "colonize" Morocco ("shadow-colonials on call") so that Germany can legitimize interest in Morocco.
They land in Agadir; civilians, including Kit, are taken ashore and the battleship leaves.
Kit ends up crewing on a steam trawler out of Ostend (Belgium), the Formalhaut. They travel back to Belgium and Kit leaves the ship.
(Discussion of local belief that [Biblical] Jonah was bilocated, Straits of Gibraltar acting as metaphysical juncture point between two worlds.)
The Zombinis remain on the Stupendica. Dally worries that Kit has disappeared. The ship lands at Trieste (Austria, at the time), its destination and they disembark.

Kit

Kit lands in Ostend and tries to figure out how he's going to get to Gottingen.
In a bar, he runs into an unruly band of Quaternions who seem to recognize him. He meets Barry Nebulay from Dublin. It's a Quaternion convention; Quaternions are feeling irrelevant (they lost out in electromagnetism to vectorists?). Kit takes up with the Quaternions, hoping to make enough at the casino to pay for travel to Gottingen.
Down the hall from the Quaternions are a cell of Belgian nihilists--Eugenie, Fatou, Denis, and Policarpe-- called Young Congo. The Belgian and French intelligence communities are paying attention to them. They feel a moral obligation--some call it an obsession--to assassinate King Leopold of Belgium.
Young Congo recently joined forces with Italian naval renegades Rocco and Pino, who have stolen plans for a low-speed manned torpedo (the Siluro Dirigible a Lenta Corsa), which they're building (they=Rocco and Pino? Rocco and Pino and Young Congo?) in order to attack King Leopold's royal yacht. This torpedo can target only stationary objects it can physically touch.
Barry Nebulay introduces Kit to beautiful (and brilliant) female Quaternion UmekiTsurigane.
Root Tubsmith shows up.
In the casino, Kit meets Pleiade Lafrisee. The mathematicians win money for her; she buys them dinner.
Pleiade is to meet Piet Woevre, formerly of the Force Publique in the Congo, a group known for police brutality. He's in Belgium to target "socialists", meaning Slavs and Jews. He's a hired killer; his section chief is de Decker. Woevre is obsessed with the Quaternions. ("Seems that, on the face of it, all mathematics leads, doesn't it, sooner or later, to some kind of human suffering" but the difference between him and them is that their suffering doesn't distinguish who it hits.) He's instructed to look into the group MKIV/ODC which might be involved with something related to torpedos.
Woevre get s Pleiade to distract Kit; when Kit returns to his hotel his bedroll is gone, taken by the political police. They see him as a nihilist outlaw.
Belgium is a pawn in international politics just like Colorado is, kind of.
Pleiade takes Kit on a tour of the Mayonnaise Works, and someone tries to kill him (drown him in mayonnaise) there. He's rescued by Rocco and Pino. Kit didn't trust her to begin with. (Meanwhile, Barry's been teaching her about Quaternism.)

page 548.

Reading Notes #6

2009-07-03T18:35:00.007-04:00

"[Y]ou might have ended up like old Crayke, rather more fond than has proved wise, of, ehrm, that is..."
"Fond of...?"
"Well, I'd assumed you knew; everyone else does. Here--spot of audit, perhaps--"
"Capsheaf?"
A sigh. "Shetland...I say how does one... well, actually, Shetland ponies. D'accord? now you're all up to date."
"Crayke and..."
"Oh, and female as well, so it seems."
"Hasn't the breed a certain... reputation for viciousness?"
"Yes well you'd be bitter too wouldn't you," put in Ratty McHugh. "Dreaming of attention from some Arab or Thoroughbred and getting old Crayke instead? Really."
"He's still...here at Cambridge?"
"Retired up north, actually, he and his companion, to a quite pleasant little croft, been in the family apparently for centuries, up on Mainland, near Mavis Grind... both of them written up, with some regularity, in the orthopedic journals... spending hugely on solicitors of course--even assuming they could find a registrar who'd even think about legitimizing--well I mean, it wouldn't be cheap, would it."
"He--wants to... marry..."
"It might seem odd I suppose... unless of course one has actually met Dymphna, and understands how charming, at least most of the time, she can--"
p. 492

"If [Katie's immigrant parents] had been sailing into the future, toward some unknowable form of the afterlife, what was this journey of Dally's the other way? A kind of release from death and judgment back into childhood?"
p. 505

Did Gibson Girls really avert their noses, as well as their eyes, from men they wanted to appear indifferent to?

Was Belgium really the most densely populated country on earth before World War I?

Where We're At: Parts 3.4-3.5: Bilocations

2009-07-03T17:50:00.009-04:00

Deuce and Lake

Return to his hometown, Egypt, Illinois. His sister Hope and her husband Levi are there. Deuce feels trapped.
Since they got married Deuce no longer feels alone. Guilt re Webb eats him; he keeps finding ways (and things for which) to beg Lake's forgiveness; he doesn't realize how little it matters any more to Lake. Lake knows he killed Webb but hasn't acknowledged knowing to Deuce. She goads him; he claims he was just hired help: "They would've hired anybody" but can't quite talk about it.
Deuce is afraid of ghosts and is waiting for Webb to find him.
"Back in the mountains, right up till the day the Owners turned and came after him, he had felt not so much working on one side of the Law or the other as protected from the choice itself." (p 476)
They arrive in Wall o'Death, Missouri, built around remains of a carnival inspired by the Chicago Expo. Only the Wall of Death itself remains intact; it's visited by motorcycling pilgrims. The sheriff, Eugene Boilster, takes them for an expected deputy peace officer and his wife; they take the role and the job.
Happy La Foam is the local pharmacist.
As deputy, Deuce is not so much looking after day to day stuff as protection against some some abstract emergency.
The telegraph brings news from Mexico, reported by officer C. Marin, that Sloat Fresno has been killed and the killer escaped.
Deuce realizes someone might be after him, too. He runs off to Texas to take revenge..
Tace Boilster, wife of the sheriff, is Lake's friend. Lake tells Tace the whole story.
Lake dreams about Mayva.
A week or so later Deuce returns; he never came close to finding Frank.
They finally discuss Webb when it's clear that he knows that she knows. He begs her for forgiveness. This is power for her.

Neville and Nigel, and Yashmeen

Neville and Nigel are at Cambridge and are lusting for Yashmeen Halfcourt. She's interested in Cyprian Latewood, scion of the patent wallpaper Latewoods, who they know to be gay.They've spied on Yasmeen and her girlfriends swimming nude.
Cyprian Latewood and his friend Reginald "Ratty" McHugh ("tyring without notable success to mope themselves back into the lilies-and-lassitude humour of the '90s" [p. 491])--Cyprian thinks he's in love with Yashmeen; Ratty claims she's a lesbian.
Yashmeen's friends are Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun. They call her Pinky.
Ratty introduces Cyprian to Professor Renfrew. Renfrew is keeping dossiers on everyone. He calls his room with file cabinets full of dossiers his Map of the World. Ratty is one of Renfrew's favorites and while he has a louche reputation, he's involved with his work. Cyprian has noticed that Renfrew pays particular attention to Yashmeen.
Term ends, Yashmeen returns to London. She's becoming impatient with TWIT's "protection" which amounts to surveillance. Lew Basnight is around but otherwise involved professionally. She studies Gottingen professor Riemann's Zeta function.
Neville and Nigel develop an opium habit. Cyprian takes off for Berlin for vacation.
Fall term. (Cyprian is getting religion--Christ conquered death.)
Yashmeen remains obsessed with Riemann's Zeta function.She dumps Cyprian (?) to take off for Gottingen?.
Renfrew, when he learns that Yashmeen is off to Gottingen, tries to get her to seduce Werfner? Spy on him? Distract him? He sends her a Snazzbury's Silent Frock, which doesn't rustle like normal dresses do. With the dress is a note that her appointment has been made and she's to wear the dress and bring her friends. The friends get fitted for frocks, as well.
The Silent Frocks have military implications and are being bought up.
Yashmeen daydreams about the Riemann problem and hits on the beginnings of a roulette system which will later make her rich.

page 504.

Reading Notes #5

2009-07-03T13:03:00.005-04:00

"The conferees had gathered here from all around the world, Russian nihilists with peculiar notions about the laws of history and reversible processes, Indian swamis concerned with the effect of time travel on the laws of Karma, Sicilians with equal apprehensions for the principle of vendetta, American tinkers like Merle with specific electromechanical questions to clear up. Their spirits all one way or another invested in, invested by, the siegecraft of Time and its mysteries." (p. 452)

"Here, each summer at Candlebrow, for miles up and down the riverside, a huge population of jobbers and operators appeared running pitches in a bazaar of Time, offering for sale pocket-watches and wall clocks, youth potions, false birth certificates duly notarized, systems of stock-market prediction, results of horse races at distant tracks well before post time, along with telegraphic facilities for placing actual wages on the fates of these as-yet-unaccelerated animals, strangely gleaming electromechanical artifacts alleged to come from "the future"--"You say now, the live chicken goes in this end here--" and above all instruction in the many forms of time-transcendence, timelessness, counter-time, escapes and emancipations from Time as practiced by peoples from all parts of the world, curiosity as to which was assumed to be the true unstated reason for attendance at these summer gatherings." (p. 454)

"Torvald hovered over them for a moment, as if trying to analyze how murderous it might be feeling today, then, briefly slowing and resuming speed, this being the Tornadic equivalent of a shrug, moved on to more promising prey." (*p 456)

Where We're At: Parts 3.2-3.3: Bilocations

2009-07-03T13:02:00.006-04:00

Merle Rideout

Badly misses Dally. He quits the amalgamator's job at Little Hellkite and takes off for random places eastward.
In Audacity, Iowa he meets movie projectionist, Fisk, filling in for watchmaker Wilt Flambo, trying to keep movies running. What are movies but still images and time manipulation and light?
Merle moves on and ends up at Candlebrow, Ohio. Candlebrow is where he's been looking for that was missing in his life; the summer conference is going on.
As a professor discusses time as circular, a tornado descends.This specific tornado keeps returning; its name is Thorvald. The scientists have tried to communicate with it.
Another born again image (p 453)
Merle returns year after year, taking day jobs in between.
One day Merle sees the Inconvenience and the Chums; they're looking for hypops gear and introduce him to Roswell Bounce who Merle knew in CLeveland. Bounce lost his (patent/intellectual property) fight against Scarsdale Vibe and has turned to dynamiting for revenge.
Roswell is searching for the light and he's heading for California where the movies are--they're the future of light.
Famous German mathematician Hermann Minkowski comes to give a lecture on space and time.

Frank Webb

Returns to the US and finds himself heading for Nochechita. He's looking for Estrella Briggs. He can't understand the town any more and feels like Stray, Reef, and the rest are there but he can't quite see them. He runs into schoolteacher Linnet Dawes who tells him that Reef left Stray and Jesse, and Stray and Jesse are in Fickle Creek, NM.
Fickle Creek is full of motorcyclists. Zoltan, one of them, is scared of X shapes. [Yet another Christ image.]
He sees Stray with regionally famous Vang Feeley; she doesn't recognize him.
He returns to Denver where he meets up with the Reverend Moss Gatlin driving a trolley car labelled Anarchist Heaven. Gatlin heard about Sloat and says Frank needs to tell Mayva; he points Frank toward Cripple, where Mayva is.
Frank (with Gatlin) goes to Cripple (they "could see how forlorn and beaten down that recent battleground had become. The owners had sure won.") He runs into (the) Groucho Marx (described as Julius, etc) who tells him that Mayva has an ice-cream parlor.
Mayva tells Frank that the owners have been paying her off, window's compensation, all along (and it's still hard times for her anyway). She knows he killed Sloat Fresno. They don't discuss it but both believe that Webb was the Kieselguhr Kid--that all the carousing was a cover and never really happened. Mayva can sleep at night even knowing that Deuce is still out there--Frank doesn't need to give her happy endings; Sloat was enough for her.

page 471.

2009-07-02T16:26:00.000-04:00

Man, these summaries are killing me. But without them, I can't keep straight the more abstract story lines--I need the going back and rereading, and I need having written the bullet points. (Standard plotlines like Dally in NYC, I understand just fine and could easily get by with checking someone else's summaries as needed to bring back "when we last saw this character" details.)

Where We're At: Part 3.1: Bilocations

2009-07-02T16:24:00.009-04:00

The Chums:

Lindsay got sidetracked when his regular physical revealed Incipient Gamomania, the abnormal desire to be married. (Chums must remain single.)
While in NYC previously, Lindsay heard about the "'Turkish Corner' that really was supposed, in some not strictly metaphorical way, to provide an 'escape nook to Asia.' Like, 'One minute you're in a horrible high-bourgeois New York parlor, the next out on the Asian desert, on top of a Bactrian camel, searching for a lost subterranean city.'" After being sidetracked when his regular physical revealed Incipient Gamomania, the abnormal desire to be married (Chums must remain single), Lindsay finds finds himself on a camel traveling to meet the Chums. The camel detects something out there.
The Chums are on the subdesertine frigate Saksaul (captain is Toadflax), traveling under the sand; the Inconvenience is parked back at an oasis. Toadflax claims that it's under the sand that the lost city of Shambhala will be found. He mentions that German professors have been poking around, looking--but you need the Saksaul's paramorphoscope to find it.
The Saksaul's mission is to find Saksaul ("be there fustest with the mostest' as your general Forrest used to say") . But has Toadflax already discovered it? Civilian Stilton Gaspereaux controls the navigation room of the Saksaul--talks about the Crusades as holy pilgrimages. (p 436)
Cities on the Sfiuncino Itinerary as stations of the cross.
Iceland spar lets all them see the Sfiuncino Itinerary as a map they can go inside except distances are based on a fourth coordinate axis--a fourth dimension (time).
They dock at Nuevo Rialto (old Manichean city, destroyed by Jenghiz Khan, briefly occupied by Venice ca 13th century). They encounter talking sand fleas the size of camels. The Chums strap on their hypops gear and explore Nuevo Rialto.
In a bar Chick overhears oil prospectors Leonard and Lyle talking about heading next for Sodom and Gomorrah--for oil there as foretold by the Bible ("fixin to be the next Spindletop"). Is oil the real reason for Saksaul's journey? They'd accept Shambhala but really want oil? Lionel and Lyle would pay off the Chums for looking in the ship's logbook and noting oil (coal? "bituminous") deposits. Randolph gets caught with dynamite in Toadflax's cabin, where the safe with the log books (which would show where oil is) are. Oops.
Back on the Inconvenience, Miles talks about souls in battle--what Darby and Chick saw in the time machine in NYC.
Something attacks the Saksaul--perhaps it's Germans or Austrians, or standard oil or the Nobel brothers. Toadflax sends Gaspereaux with hypops gear to London to warn them and tell of their demise--he's to tell Inspector Sands in Whitehall. Many under-sand vessels are attacked and destroyed (crews, too) as under-sand petroleum deposits are attacked. Parts of the ships end up throughout the eastern world and this will change history.
Inspector Sands --the real one, not someone using the all-purpose counter-terrorism code name--picks up Gaspereaux as a potential anarchist. Turns out Gaspereaux is part of intelligence.
Gaspereaux explains to Sands that they've (which side? he's not sure) found Shambhala and it's intact--there's a force field around it--even though other underground ruins have been destroyed. Anyone who knows where it is can now enter and occupy it--all the powers want to and will fight for it. Or maybe this is just Gaspereaux's imagination/hallucination.

(page 448)

Reading Notes #4

2009-06-29T13:28:00.004-04:00

Candlebrow University is named for its endower, Gideon Candlebrow, who made his fortune in Smegmo, "an artificial substitute for everything in the edible-fat category, including margarine, which many felt wasn't that real to begin with. An eminent Rabbi of world hog capital Cincinnati, Ohio, was moved to declare the product kosher, adding that 'the Hebrew people have been waiting four thousand years for this. Smegmo is the Messiah of kitchen fats.'"

Did Offenbach really write "From the Halls of Montezuma"?

Where We're At: Parts 2.20-2.21: Iceland Spar

2009-06-29T13:14:00.020-04:00

In New York City with the Chums (on leave); it's 1903:

The Chums receive instructions via Plug Loafsley, a street Arab, whose headquarters is the Lollipop Lounge, a child bordello. While delivering the message Loafsley makes a casual sarcastic remark about "the time machine" and the Chums ask to meet with him further.
Chick and Darby meet with Plug at the Lollipop Lounge to ask about the time machine; Plug takes them to see Dr. Zoot, under the Ninth Avenue el, who made the time machine. Zoot lets them have a sample ride, which he rescues them from--they see strange scary beings. He explains that he didn't build the defective machine; he bought it from Alonzo Meatman at the Ball in Hand bar at the annual summer time-travel conference at Candlebrow University in Ohio.

The Chums travel to Ohio to Candlebrow University.

Vanderjuice is a guest lecturer at this year's conference. With Vanderjuice, the Chums visit the local junkyard and see hulls of many failed time machines--but not of Zoot's machine.
The Chums go to the Ball in Hand bar to look for Alonzo Meatman. (Image of a girl with a pygmy lover here--third time so far for a pygmy lover.) They see a boy vanish, and leave. Chick returns and learns that the boy who vanished is Meatman.
Meatman tells Chick that the resurrected ghosts (or whatever) are everywhere and takes Chick to meet the visiting dead.
Chick meets Mr. Ace who explains he's come from the future for refuge from [his own] present: "We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present--your future--a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty--the end of the capitalistic experiment. Once we came to understand the simple thermodynamic truth that Earth's resources were limited, in fact soon to run out, the whole capitalist illusion fell to pieces." Because of their economic heresy they've been forced to migrate in time--and here they are. Ace tells Chick that the Chums' assignments have all ultimately been to prevent the attempts of the future to enter the present and asks Chick to consider accepting occasional assignments from the future undead; compensation would be eternal youth (which is better than eternal life).
Chick "[afterwards] [c]ould not rid himself of the impression...of having been psychically interfered with. Another image here of Deliverance.
Chick reports back to the Chums--images of the Pilgrims and the Indians the Pilgrims' first winter. But what if they're not innocents, what if they're raiders, wanting to take something back to the future. Or maybe, says Chick, they're bunco artists, testing the Chums' loyalty to their Hierarchy.
Chick brings Miles with him to meet again with Mr. Ace. Miles recognizes Ace-he's out for no good, Miles has seen them before watching him.
The crew begins to find evidence of Trespass in the ship. (Chums, not just this bunch, had been believing that they were immune from aging by being Chums. On finding that false, they've been willing to sell out to gain (or regain) eternal youth.)
To escape from the Trespassers, the Chums join the Marching Academy Harmonica Band at Candlebrow? In Illinois somewhere? The other student harmonicists are other Chums sections?
Alonzo Meatman is there, too. He's a "squealer" (rat). He disappears.
The Chums begin to wonder whether they're not actually harmonicists, whether it's all a hoax they're playing on themselves. They begin to forget the Chums, wonder whether they're actually readers who've been serving as volunteer decoys for the real Chums. They get used to the idea, the longing for the actual Chums ebbs.
And finally they see in the distance a road, and the Inconvenience at the end of the road, and there's Pugnax. And the Trespassers are still there but the crew has learned to ignore them.
Alonzo Meatman reappears with orders from Higher Authority--the Sfinciuno Itinerary, and orders to go to Inner Asia, Bukhara. They're to meet the frigate Saksaul, Captain Q. Zane Toadflax. They'll need Hypopsammotic Survival Apparatus ("Hypops apparatus"), which they ask Vanderjuice about. Vanderjuice tells them that Roswell Bounce invented it for the Vibe corporation.
Bounce tells them that the Hypops apparatus lets one travel beneath sand (i.e., desert) as if beneath water. Vibe corporation stole the idea from him; he'll undercut their price. He sells six units to the Chums. Something about flight into the next dimension (time). They leave Candlebrow (and Alonzo still there) and proceed to Bukhara.

Page 428. End of Iceland Spar section.

Where We're At: Part 2.19: Iceland Spar

2009-06-28T20:03:00.014-04:00

Frank Webb (who last we saw previously under attack by the Bob Meldrum or someone, in Telluride)

Has escaped to "Old Mexico" ("was to spend months that seemed like years traipsing to no purpose around an empty shadowmap, a dime novel of Old Mexico, featuring gringo evildoers in exile, sudden deaths, a government that had already fallen but did not yet know it, a revolution that would never begin though thousands were already dying and suffering in its name.") with the Gaston Villa band and meets Ewball Oust, whose family is paying him to stay in Mexico and try to earn a living as a mining engineer/metallurgist. Oust sees that what Frank is really after is the spar (properly called espato in Spanish; colloquially also called espanto, "which is something either horrifying or amazing, depending"), not the argentaurum. Frank has seen ghosts through the spar.
Frank and Ewball cross into Mexico and end up at Guanajuato. Frank keeps dreaming of Deuce Kindred, who keeps telling him that he's not here, he's miles away. Frank stumbles on a street that's been in his Deuce dreams.
Frank and Ewball are arrested for something political. In jail they meet Dwayne Provecho. Someone's funneling money to Ewball from outside and jail is okay. Jailer Sgt Amparo Vasquez (female) tells them that the charge was something that one of them did "a long time ago, on the other side." Frank assumes it's him; Ewball has been bribing people all along but that's not enough to imprison them both for.
Dwayne Provecho has been sent there on a mission to offer Frank contract employment because it's widely believed (in the both US and Mexico) that Frank is the Kieselguhr Kid. Apparently Ellmore Disco and Bob Meldrum both believe this--and this is why Meldrum didn't kill him on first sight ("'I frightened Hair-Trigger Bob?' 'More like professional courtesy.'")
Frank and Ewball break out of jail. Dwayne stays behind. Frank and Ewell take off deeper into Mexico with anarchist El Nato and his parrot, Joaquin. Joaquin talks with Frank about double refraction/espato (vis-a-vis cities and states--Zacatecas, Zacatecas, etc-- being named the smae). Frank is being haunted--there's something in his past he needs to take care of. After a failed attempt to steal dynamite, Ewball drives off army men attacking Tarahumare Indians then takes off northward; El Nato peels off as well.
Frank travels with the Indians, including El Espinero (the dowser) and his (unnamed) wife and her sister, Estrella, and heads north as well into the Sierra. El Espinero leads Frank to a large, perfect calcite; in it Frank sees Sloat Fresno (where he is), but not Deuce Kindred. Years later Ewball explains that since Ewball and Frank saved two lives, something about two lives owed to them. Deuce is one; Huerta (the leader of ???) should ideally be the other.
Frank splits with El Espinero and ends up in a cantina somewhere, and Sloat Fresno is there. Frank kills him. The locals tell him that Deuce Kindred has already left. "This had been so quick, even, you could say, easy. He would soon begin to understand how it all might turn, was already, well before he had the godforsaken little town at his back, turning, to regret.

Page 396.

Where We're At: Parts 2.17-2.18: Iceland Spar

2009-06-25T03:40:00.012-04:00

Dally

Travels (by train) to New York (where her roommate is Katie, a would-be actress), andl ands a job working for Hop Fong as a girl being sold into white slavery in Chinatown.
R. Willshire Vibe sees a performance and asks her to be in his Broadway production; she declines at least in part because she's under contract to Hop Fong. Vibe and Fong talk and suddenly there's a lot more money being poured into their scenes, and also suddenly tong wars (between Tom Lee's On Leong tong and rivals Mock Duck and the Hip Sing tong) break out in Chinatown and curtail the white slavery performances.
Needing work, Dally calls on Vibe. Bad-vaudeville producer Con McVeety is also at Vibe's office; Con has work for her and Vibe doesn't, so Dally goes to work for Con (at his dime museum) as a card girl (the girl who holds cards introducing the acts). (Con also produces a Bowery version of Julius Caesar, called Dagoes with Knives; Dally loses out on a part to a girlfriend of a tong gangster.)
Dally and Katie attend a party at Vibe's, where someone tries to handcuff her and she's rescued by Erlys, her birth mother, whom she goes to live with in a fabulous big apartment with Luca Zombini, Erlys's husband who she left Merle for, and their many children (including Bria, Nunzi, Cici, Dominic, Lucia, and Concetta) who participate in the family magic act.
Parts of Zombini's act are built around using the Nicol prism and double refraction (via Iceland spar). Minor problem is that the double refraction is actually creating two actual people (from one). He's consulted with Vanderjuice, and it's a problem with a hole in time. The only possible way to fix it might be with mirrors which are only available from the Isola degli Specchi (Isle of Mirrors) in Venice.
Erlys tells Katie that Merle wasn't actually her birth father--it was one Bert Snidell, who was killed before Dally was born and whose family would have nothing to do with Erlys.
The whole Zamboni family, including Dally, travel to Venice to perform (and for Zombini to try to de-create the duplicate people via a conjurer's mirror from the Isle of Mirrors).

Reef

Is still with Stray (and son Jessse), mostly, drifting from job to job or scam to scam. (There's another image of the closed frontier here, parlor society, loss of freedom.)
Meanwhile, he's using carousing as a cover for dynamiting. He bombs something too close to home and Stray finds out about his double life. (There's a bit about the day of atonement or possibly the second coming, coming.)
The anarchists who've died in the conflicts are relying on Reef to continue (or he's hallucinating the following a particularly loud explosion).
It's time for Frank to take up the revenge action, so Frank heads for Denver to find Frank.
En route to Denver, a man-caused avalanche nearly kills Reef; the Owners Association is after him. Reef returns to Stray, says goodbye, and goes undercover.
Reef creates himself as "east coast nerve case" Thrapston Cheesely III and meets traveling Englishwoman Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin, who brings him along (keeps him) with her band of neurasthenics. They eventually land in New Orleans, where they part after a drunken quarrel.
Reef meets bandleader Dope Breedlove and travelling Irish insurrectionist Wolfe Tone O'Rooney, who is raising money for the Land League to funnel to the Colorado miners and who mentions that he'd hoped to meet the Kieselguhr Kid, who seems not to be active any more.
O'Rooney takes Reef in and introduces him to Flaco, another European anarchist dynamiter. Wolfe leaves for Mexico. Flaco and Reef wait for tramp steamer Despedida, which will be going to Genoa where they'll look for work dynamiting tunnels.

This takes us to page 373.

Where We're At: Parts 2.12-2.16

2009-06-23T16:15:00.000-04:00

Lake Traverse

Lake and Mayva have moved to town and are working at a cafe. Lake meets and falls in love with Deuce Kindred. (He knows who she is; she doesn't know who he is.) Lake had been seeing Dr. Willis Turnstone, from the Miner's Hospital. Oleander Prudge (female) tells Mayva that Deuce killed Webb; Mayva tells Lake; Lake won't leave Deuce; Mayva leaves Lake.
Lake and Deuce marry; she's a virgin bride (so whatever Webb thought she was doing, she wasn't). Sloat Fresno moves in with them and Lake is sleeping with both Deuce and Sloat (simultaneously).
The mining company has noticed that the bombings have not ceased with Webb's death; either they went for the wrong guy or Deuce lied about killing him; Deuce is warned. Has Sloat sold Deuce out? Sloat leaves.

Frank Traverse
In Denver

Frank hides out in Denver from whoever killed Webb and as time goes on to try to find out who killed Webb. He's being approached b y mine company middle-manager types who want to employ him--these are Vibe company reps. He learns that Vibe Corp was ultimately behind Webb's murder (and knows already that Vibe is paying for Kit's schooling at Yale). Vibe Corp is trying to buy Frank's loyalty? something? and because Frank won't accept the offer he's essentially unemployable in gold mining, which leads him to specialize in zinc and spend more time in Leadville and Lake County.
Wren Provenance is a Radcliffe grad, anthropologist studying the southwest.
Crime reporter Booth Verbing warns Frank that (Cap'n) Bulkley Wells's people down from Telluride (where Reef had been) have been looking for him. Another Stations of the Cross reference-Wren has arrived here after Stations of the Cross, etc.
Frank explains to Wren that if Reef hasn't avenged Webb, the job falls to Frank. He knows that the gunners were Deuce and Sloat and that they were hired by the Mine Owners Association in Telluride.

In Telluride

Frank goes to Telluride to search for Deuce and Sloat. The city is filled state Guardsmen.
Gunfighter and hair-trigger temper Bob Meldrum is here; his day job is security at the Tomboy mine and he also works for Cap'n Wells.
Ellmore Disco, a shopkeeper, is "the man to see" in town. Frank sees Ellmore to try to get an appointment with Cap'n Wells, ostensibly to try to sell him on a new system for zinc mining (extracting?); Ellmore tells Frank that Frank needs to be in good with Meldrum first. Loomis is Ellmore's aide and sidekick. La Blanca is Meldrum's wife.
Frank meets Meldrum; Meldrum won't tell him about Wells's whereabouts but Meldrum does point him toward Merle Rideout, who is working as an amalgamator at the Little Hellkite mine--Frank can try to sell his new process to Merle. Frank backs up Meldrum in a bar fight. A Japanese trade delegation is in town including a representative of international spy Baron Akashi, a roving military attache in Europe (meanwhile, there's Russia-Finland issues--Russia occupies Finland at present); they may also or instead be interested in industrial spying.
Frank rents a horse and sets out for Little Hellkite mine (it's haunted) to see Merle Rideout. He meets Dally, who is working as a dynamiter in the mines. Merle tells Frank that he knew Webb; Frank is looking for whoever pulled the trigger on Webb, not for Wells, the boss. Merle shows him a photo of Deuce and Sloat. Dally warns Frank that Bob Meldrum (and his sidekick Rudie) is after him; Dally helps him escape through the Silver Orchard brothel.
Merle tells Frank about Dr. Stephen Emmens in New York, who transmutes silver to argentaurum, which looks like (and is passed off as, including to the U.S. Mint) gold. Look through spar to see whether it's gold or argentaurum(?). What if the Emmens process reduces the value of gold, "knock[ing] the Gold Standard right onto its glorified ass"? Merle tells Frank that what he, Frank thinks he's looking for really isn't what he is looking for; and that Webb was also looking for (and similarly misguided re) and sends him to talk to Doc Turnstone (Lake's old beau).
Turnstone has seen gnomes in the mines, like Merle, Dally, and Frank have.
Turnstone earlier had helped pistolero Jimmy Drop with back pain, worked a chiropractor circuit before being hired at the Miner's hospital (where he courted Lake and Lake dumped him for Deuce--this is the first Frank learns of Lake and Deuce). Deuce used to be part of Drop's gang; Drop offers to harm Deuce as a favor to Turnstone but also because he doesn't like Deuce ("nobody liked him, mean little brush snake").
Frank meets Jimmy Drop. Drop knew Reef, who he says has gone all the way back east.
Ellmore helps Frank disguise himself as a Mexican musician with Gaston Villa and his band.
Frank visits Webb's grave; Webb's ghost tells him that Deuce and Sloat have left town and split up. Frank wants to find Deuce and Lake.
Dally leaves town and heads east.

Kit Traverse

is at Yale and is burned out. His mentor, Gibbs, the mathematician, has died. He's being watched by Vibe henchmen.
Vanderjuice sends for him and gives him a letter (already opened and kept from Webb for some time already) from Lake telling him that Webb had been killed and Reef and Frank were avenging him. None of the Vibes, including Colfax, mention Webb; were Vibes behind the killing?
Tesla has erected another transmitter, on Long Island, across the Sound.
Vanderjuice tells Kit about his working for Scarsdale Vibe earlier (and yes, Vibe was financing Tesla's work at the same time as he was financing sabotaging it). Vanderjuice suggests that Kit get out, that he take the education being paid for as blood money and that he go to Germany to study with Dr. Hillbert at Gottingen, who is developing a "Spectral Theory" which requires a vector space of infinite, not just three, dimensions. This would move Kit much further into vectorism.
Colfax and Kit boat to Long Island to meet Tesla; Tesla knows that Scarsdale Vibe played him; thanks Kit for earlier (Colorado) suggestions.
Colfax has been reporting to Scarsdale about Kit and was supposed to kill him (because he wants out of being bought?). Colfax suggests that Kit get out, go to Germany.
Kit meets with Scarsdale Vibe and Foley; subtext of the conversation is that Kit knows about Webb's killing. Scarsdale would be more comfortable now with Kit out of the picture and sends him off to Germany.
Was Scarsdale bringing Kit east an act of mercy? Is he paying off Mayva (and thereby Lake) and employing Frank? Or was he doing it to corrupt Webb, the anarchist's, children? Scarsdale is increasingly isolated and Foley worries.

(p. 335)

Reading Notes #3

2009-06-23T14:13:00.010-04:00

I cannot believe that I'm having to research Tarot. (Also, I cannot believe that again I can get so lost so fast.) On the other hand, if I hadn't had to research Tarot, I'd never have encountered this, in Wikipedia: . Um, yeah.

Meanwhile, "the Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable."

Trying to summarize the TWIT section, it's becoming clearer to me that this bit really is dense with new characters and new themes and it's all built on stuff I know nothing about--Tarot, development of southeastern Europe prior to World War I.

"[Clive Crouchmas] greeted the Cohen by raising his left hand, then spreading the fingers two and two away from the thumb so as to form the Hebrew letter shin, signifying the initial letter of one of the pre-Mosaic (that is, plural) names of God which may never be spoken.
'Basically wishing long life and prosperity,' explained the Cohen, answering with the same gesture."

Where We're At: Parts 2.9-2.11: Iceland Spar

2009-06-23T14:05:00.032-04:00

TWIT/Lew Basnight:

Lew Basnight is in London.
Because they found him "emerg[ing] out of an explosion" Nigel and Neville have sponsored him for membership in TWIT (the True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys), a psychic thing, like Madame Blavatsky ("[these groups] and other arrangements for seekers of certitude, of whom there seemed to be an ever-increasing supply as the century has rushed to its end and through some unthinkable zero and on out the other side"). He's to be a psychic detective for TWIT.
The Grand Cohen of the London chapter of TWIT is Nicholas Nookshaft.
Nookshaft explains the explosion as a passageway from another world and therefore Basnight may be some sort of something.
Yashmeen Halfcourt is a Tzaddik (high level TWIT). She'll be studying math at Girton (Cambridge). She doesn't entirely believe that TWIT is what it claims to be ("it might be politics, or even some scheme to defraud").
Yasmeen was a ward of Lt.-Colonel G. Auberon Halfcourt, who's believed to be somewhere in India.
TWIT's mission is to track those 22 people or groups who embody the major arcana of the Tarot.
The Devil, card #XV, is rival university professors Renfrew (at Cambridge) and Werfner (at Gottingen), who are competing experts and power-brokers in the relationship of the west, and specifically western development, in the Balkans and Asia Minor ("the Eastern Question"). The major issue at the moment is the development of the Baghdad railway (Europe through Turkey and on to the Persian Gulf--a major improvement in trade routes, even more beneficial than the Suez Canal)--who (Germany or Britain) will be allowed to do it and therefore will control it.
Madame Natalia Eskimoff is a psychic. She used to be The Fool (one of the 22), but changed allegiances to the other side. She predicts that either Renfrew or Werfner will murder the other.
Clive Crouchmas is a low-level TWIT member who works for government doing something related to the Ottoman territories in his day job--he's a channel between TWIT and Renfrew and Werfner.
Basnight is still looking for Cyclomite dynamite, the hallucinogen.
Dr. Coombs De Bottle runs something which investigates anarchist bombs and bombers. He's found bombs (poison gas grenades, actually) which are disguised as Australian cricket ball (Australia-England cricket matches are coming up) and which are being placed by the Gentleman Bomber of Headingly.
Basnight is sent to Cambridge to meet with Renfrew. Renfrew is also trying to find the Gentleman Bomber of Headingly (?), who Basnight may recognize, and tries to hire Basnight to work for him (Renfrew) instead of TWIT--to bring the Bomber to him. Basnight tells the Cohen.

The Chums are in Venice.

Their mission is to locate the Sfinciuno Itinerary, "a map of chart of post-Polo routes into Asia, believed by many to lead to the hidden city of Shambhala itself."
The Bol'shaia Igra (Padzhitnoff) is present as well; Padzhitnoff is Counterfly's rival with a waitress.
Domenico Sfinciuno is the Shadow-Doge-in-Exile. His family has been trading with the east (inner Asia) since the 1300s; their trading route (a chain of oases and Venetian settlements) developed into an alternative to the Silk Road that the Chums are supposed to locate.
The Sfinciuno Itinerary is a spiritual quest and not a physical map or itinerary. Maybe. Stuff on page 249 about parallel worlds. Artisans on the Isola degli Specchi (Isle of Mirrors) (now flooded and underwater and uninhabitable, maybe unfindable) developed mirrors that revealed parallel worlds--the mirrors are paramorphoscopes. The Sfinciuno Itinerary "was encrypted as a paramorphic distortion meant to be redeemed from the invisible with the aide of one particular configuration of lenses and mirrors, whose exact specifications" have been lost. Something about Iceland spar and mirrors.
Miles sees a vision that tells him that their quest for the Sfinciuno Itinerary is more for their own benefit than for Sfinciuno's. They're on a Pilgrimage--which is compared to the Franciscans' development of the Stations of the Cross to allow parishioners to journey to Jerusalem in place--"to save us from the blinding terror of having to make the real journey, from one episode to the next of the last day of Christ on Earth, and at last to the real, unbearable Jerusalem."
Chick meets Renata, who reads his Tarot and finds XVI, The Tower--which signifies that the Campanile will be hit by some kind (metaphoric?) of lightning and two parties of some sort will fall.
Something from some other existence fires at the Inconvenience and the Bol'shaia Igra and topples the Capanile.
The Bol'shaia Igra have been trying for two years to assassinate Mr. Ryohei Uchida, in Japan; his Black Dragon Society tried to hire the Chums last year for routine aerial surveillance. The Black Dragon Society's purpose is to destroy the Russian presence in Manchuria--it's technically Russia's but Japan wants it for its opium and gold. (And here's another South Africa/gold reference.)
Is the Bol'shaia Igra looking for the Sfinciuno Itinerary as well?

(p. 259)

Chums of Chance Books: Read 'Em All!

2009-06-21T07:07:00.002-04:00

The Chums of Chance and the Ice Pirates
The Chums of Chance Nearly Crash into the Kremlin
The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth (Reef reads this aloud to Webb or Webb's corpse as they travel back to Telluride.)
The Chums of Chance and the Caged Women of Yokohama

Reading Notes #2

2009-06-21T01:20:00.007-04:00

I'm about a fifth of the way through Against the Day, and I'm realizing that this is a conventional big novel--one theme, a limited cast (large, but limited in the sense that the major cast members are followed episodically through time and place), plots that fold out linearly--start at Point A, go to Point B. And I'm a bit disappointed, I guess. On the one hand, it's been over 30 years since Gravity's Rainbow was published and it's a safe bet that overall Against the Day will be read under far less influence of soft drugs, but still. If I'm going to go along with over a thousand pages about labor history and why labor and socialism are right and good--and, to be clear, I agree with the sentiment--I want weird-tasting wine gums and sexually aggressive cephalopods along the way. And I'm not really getting them. What happened to World's Fairs that become, well, whiter toward their centers (the "well" there makes the sentence for me) and Alaskan exhibits with special reindeer dances? Is the turn of the century American West so very dire for the common man that there's no absurd humor to be had? For an author whose major work is about the ending of World War II and the big bomb, is that even possible? Even the perfect set-ups that are here--say, English tourists on an Oscar Wilde tour of the West--are just left hanging, unplayed-with. It's as if somewhere around the 9/11 scenes, all the goofiness went away and we're left with nice moments that don't get explored for their absurdity and humor--or, on the other hand, for the anger behind them. We've got tasteful and well-done; I miss the flashy, showy stuff that doesn't always work but when it does, is magic.

Where We're At: Parts 2.5-2.8: Iceland Spar

2009-06-20T06:47:00.017-04:00

Lew Basnight, the detective from Chicago, is in Denver tracking anarchists and more specifically the dynamiter called the Kieselguhr Kid. (This is a non-starter assignment that he's on because the bigger outfits got nowhere finding this guy.)
- Lew's turning into an anarchist or at least a union/anarchist sympathizer.
- Owner's operatives are infiltrating the mines--and may or may not be actually on the side of the owners (may be playing one or both sides).
- Burke Ponghill is the editor of the Lodazal, Colorado newspaper; the town doesn't really exist yet and the paper is part of attracting people there. Lodazal will be a mining town that mines...something. Ponghill's brother Buddy turned in his other brother Brad as the Kieselguhr Kid, which he most likely isn't.
- Nate Privett, the detective agency owner, vists Lew in Colorado--his annual inspection visit. Nate accidentally tells Lew that he, Lew, doesn't really need to find the Kid, just to do enough be credible enough for Nate to keep billing for his services. This disgusts Lew, and moves him definitely to the labor/anarchist side; he basically quits the case.
- Lew accidentally eats cyclomite dynamite, a hallucinogen, and becomes obessesed with dynamite; he gets blasted and is found by Nigel and Neville, English tourists who're following Oscar Wilde's tourist path in the American West. They bring him to England (traveling through the Galveston Hurricane of 1900) as a stowaway.
The Traverse family.
- Daughter Lake has become a prostitute in Silverton, Colorado; she comes home to visit and father Webb throws her out of the house. Wife Mayva goes to Lake to convince her to come home again.
- Without family around, father Webb, the miner/dynamiter, is deeper into union/mine issues. He meets Deuce Kindred and develops a father-son relationship with him.
- Deuce Kindred and Sloat Fresno are miners--or not. They're management plants and they take Webb out of town at gunpoint. Deuce and Sloat take Webb (or Webb's body--it's unclear) to Jeshimon, Utah for disposal.
- Meanwhile, Webb's son Reef convinces his brother Frank temporarily leave mining school and come with him to Nochecita, Nevada where Estrella (Stray) is pregnant with Reef's child. Stray's friend is Sage, who has Mormon relatives pressuring her to marry. Cooper is another one of Stray's suitors; he plays guitar. Frank meets schoolteacher Linnet Dawes.
- Frank receives a phone call that Deuce Kindred has Webb; Frank and Reef leave Nevada to go save or retrieve Webb; they split up before arriving at Jeshimon.
- Reef finds Webb's body in Jeshimon and brings him back home to Telluride, Colorado for burial.
- With Webb dead, Lake comes home, Frank returns to school, and Reef returns to Nevada (and Stray and the baby, a boy). Reef vows revenge on his own and Frank's behalf--he'll use "rambling and gambling" as a cover for going away for union activities/bombing. Was Webb the Kieselguhr Kid?

This takes us to page 218.

Pynchon does 9/11

2009-06-18T13:01:00.006-04:00

Here's Pynchon on 9/11. No surprise, really--he's a New Yorker. (I've always assumed that he'd live on the Upper West Side somewhere--it fits, demographically--but OTOH I like the idea of my having snarled at him at the Key Food on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope for taking 20 items into the 10-or-less express lane.) He's even got a Rudy Giuliani cameo ("His face appeared on bills posted all over the wood fences around vacant lots, the rear ends of street cars, its all-too-familiar
bone structure shining with the unforgiving simplicity of a skull").

Story-wise, the Malus's mysterious cargo causes whatever happened.

Also, somewhere in here we have another stockyards image--people funnelling into the subways. (Earlier, we had the actual stockyards at the Chicago Expo, and the closing of the American frontier limiting and directing where one could go.)

Where we're at: Parts 2.1-2.4: Iceland Spar

2009-06-18T12:21:00.030-04:00

How is it that everything made so very much sense at the end of part 1 and suddenly within the first 30 pages of part 2 everything's gone awry for me and nothing makes sense and I can't figure out what's going on? (It's Pynchon, that's how.)

Going back to summarize makes it all make sense to me.

So. We have:

IGLOO (Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation), a radiational clearinghouse or intelligence center--they're offstage.
The Tovarishchi Slutchainyi, like the Chums in Russia, led by Igor Padzhitnoff--they promote mischief, and Padzhitnoff drops cinderblocks on his victims. Ship is the Bol'shaia Igra. Padzhitnoff talks about some animal or thing that is so scary and so dangerous as to be nameless.
The Voromance Expedition.

Leader is Dr. Alden Voromance.
Ship (schooner) is the Etienne-Louis Malus.
The Chums have been instructed (at the end of part 1) to find the Voromance Expedition and convince them to give up their expedition and therefore are chasing (trying to catch up to) the Malus. The Malus is carrying what they believe to be a meteorite (which "harbor[ed] not merely a consciousness but an ancient purpose as well, and a plan for carrying it out") which is the problem.

Meeting with Voromance at an Iceland hotel: Dr. V. Ganesh Rao, a Quarternionist ISO a gateway to the Ulterior; Dodge Flannellette, an American ISO practical uses for any discoveries. Also Dr. Templeton Blope, Otto Ghloix, Hastings Froyle.
Fleetwood Vibe, son of Scarsdale, is nominally present at the Voromance Expedition meeting to record and document the proceedings; he's been instructed by Scarsdale to be looking for land for railroads. (Scarsdale's competition, [railroad tycoon E.H.] Harriman, is buying up land for what may be a trans-Bering Strait rail link.)
Scarsdale Vibe is financing the Voromance Expedition.

Constance Penhallow and her grandson, Hunter (who paints), in Iceland(?). Hunter stows away on the Malus and leaves with the Voromance Expedition.
Kit Traverse, at Yale, finally meets his benefactor, Scarsdale Vibe. Vibe tries to name Kit as his heir; Kit declines because he knows (or doesn't really know) where the money came from.
We meet more Vibes: Sons Colfax (Kit's roommate, a jock; Scarsdale finds him disappointingly obedient), Cragmont (offstage; ran off with a trapeze girl); Fleetwood, whom we've met. Vibe cousin is Dittany (female), who sleeps with Kit. Scarsdale's wife is Edwarda (Eddie), who lives in the Village next door to Scarsdale's dilletante brother, R. Wilshire Vibe; both are active in the NYC theater scene.
In Africa, in flashback, Yitzhak Zilberfeld, a Zionist looking for land for a Jewish homeland, meets Fleetwood.

The Chums catch Voromance once, fail to convince him to turn back. They're chasing him again to prevent the Malus from reaching "the city" which may be New York City. They don't(?) make it in time, and the Malus's cargo causes a 9/11-type catastrophe.

A local Icelandic food is Meat Olaf.

Several bits about South Africa and treatment of the natives (and gold, and diamonds). As a more-developed country, we build and develop in lesser-developed countries to demonstrate to the natives that our machinery--i.e., our country-- is vastly more powerful than the natives are and can kill them. Is this the same setting that shows up in a V episode and in retrospect in Gravity's Rainbow? (And if it is, can wresting bears in Vienna be far behind?)

Odd that Scarsdale has a son Fleetwood and no other offspring along the lines of Bronxville or Mount Vernon West.

This takes us to page 170.

Chums of Chance books: Read 'Em All!

2009-06-15T21:34:00.005-04:00

The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit (set in "Our Nation's Capital")
The Chums of Chance at Krakatoa
The Chums of Chance Search for Atlantis
The Chums of Chance in Old Mexico
The Chums of Chance and the Curse of the Great Kahuna
The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth ("for some reason one of the less appealing of this series")

plus something in Khartoum that Vanderjuice refers to on page 29

Where we're at: Parts 1.1-1.10: The Light Over the Ranges

2009-06-15T20:26:00.040-04:00

So at the end of part 1, The Light Over the Ranges, we have:

The Chums: Randolph, Lindsay, Darby (who I keep wanting to call Darby Crash), Miles, and Chick; and Pugnax, the dog. Plus shuffled offstage, Bindlestiffs (like the Chums) Riley, Zip, Penny Black. Chums' ship is the Inconvenience.
The detectives: Nate Privett, detective, owns White City Investigations, and employee Lew Basnight (who apparently committed a crime he can't remember and was already ditched by wife Troth), who actually does the detecting and is presently trailing and infiltrating anarchists (and presumably was assigned to the Chums' Inconvenience to watch over related events at the Expo). They're in competition with Pinkertons. Basnight was a penitent at the Esthonia hotel (contact was Drave) and he's transferred to Denver after the Exposition. Previously, Basnight was involved in protecting Archduke Ferdinand (that Archduke Ferdinand) who was in Chicago for the Expo and was looking for new prey--such as Hungarians--to kill, and the archduke's bodyguard, Max Kautsch. All except Privett (maybe) and Basnight have been shuffled offstage.
Professor Heino Vanderjuice (Yale) plus his handler in Chicago, Ray Ipsow, a socialist. Vanderjuice is also the Chums' "longtime friend and mentor". Vanderjuice works with electricity(?).
Scarsdale Vibe, financier, with sidekick Foley Walker. Vibe hires Vanderjuice to defeat Tesla (who is backed by Pierpont Morgan, way offstage) in Tesla's quest to develop a free worldwide system of electricity. Vibe may also, we find out later, have money invested in Tesla's work.
Merle Rideout, photographer, plus daughter Dally (Dahlia) and Chevrolette McAdoo the stripper. Plus offstage: Erlys, Dally's mother, and Zombini, the magician Erlys ran off with. After the Expo, Rideout (with Dally) gradually and randomly makes his way to Denver doing odd jobs along the way.
Earlier, Rideout was an Etherist and another Etherist was Roswell Bounce; Blinky Morgan was a fugitive criminal. Roswell taught Merle photochemistry/photography.
Webb Traverse, miner, dynamiter, and anarchist (socialist), Denver. Union man. Blacklisted for union? activity. Merle meets him in Denver. Wife is Mayva, kids are Reef, Frank, Kit (see below; male), Lake (female). Veikko is another dynamiter.
Kit Traverse, electricity guy. Son of dynamiter Web Traverse. Worked for Tesla; Foley Walker met him by chance(?) and via Scarsdale Vibe sent him to study at Yale (presumably under Vanderjuice).

Setting notes: Chicago World's Expo 1893; Denver following.

Like most Pynchon, not a lot of women here except as accessories. Take away Oedipa Mass--maybe--and the whole oeuvre fails the Bechdel test.

I thought I had the cast pretty much straight, but I did need to refer back to the book to fill in a lot of these and various levels of detail. Still, it's clearer than Gravity's Rainbow was at this point, or maybe I've learned to read Pynchon better (or maybe I'm way off and just deluded).

These "where we're at" segments will be more frequent from here on out. 110 pages turned out to be way more than I expected to go back through and bullet out.

Reading Notes #1

2009-06-11T01:18:00.020-04:00

So I'm around 60 pages in and I'm struck by how much easier this is for me so far than Gravity's Rainbow was. It can't be that I'm a significantly better reader or that I've developed a better memory for character names. But I even remember random book-versus-reality questions that I'd like to follow up--for example, were the buildings at the Chicago Exhibition really made of I Can't Believe It's Not Marble? So I'm wondering whether Gravity's Rainbow functions like training wheels for Against the Day in the same way that V does, in turn, for Gravity's Rainbow, or whether Pynchon is intentionally marking characters better (who we need to keep track of, who X is when X reappears)--or what.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to decide what to do with this blog. I want the discipline of writing every day, but every day writing about a book? Maybe not. And then again, looking up every random weird word or might-be-historical event would probably be unnecessary, since the book's been out for several years and there's a wiki that I think must answer most questions. But then again again, when I was reading Gravity's Rainbow it took me what seemed like hours to get a definitive answer about what "reet pleats," which were mentioned in passing, are. (The whole phrase was something like "zoot suit with reet pleats." I already knew what a zoot suit is, but two online Pynchon references and an online fashion dictionary and a hardcopy fashion dictionary all took me nowhere closer to reet pleats--which, just for the record, are pleats that are cool or snappy or any other slangy word generally meaning "good," and not, as I assumed, any particular style of pleat like inverted or Fortuny.)

Last note for today, I was amused to see Frederick Jackson Turner show up in Against the Day. I totally called that one (in an as-yet unpublished entry, but this is my blog so you'll have to trust me--or not) way back before they even got to the fair. Careful reader (or American history knowledge) points for me!

Then again, some mention of bombs (in regard to Chums in Europe backstory) had me stopping to wonder whether bombs--as in bombs bursting in air giving proof through the night--had been invented by 1893. So maybe not so much on the American history front.

Why AtD? Why now? Why blog?

2009-06-08T11:14:00.020-04:00

For the two years since I finished reading Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon's earlier long and difficult novel, I've been floating in a sea of accessible fiction and series mysteries, mostly bought used. And while there's nothing wrong with choosing your reading material based on what someone liked enough to trade for store credit, I'm beginning to feel the need for more structure, more meat. More direction. More reward. I miss images like Grigori the octopus oozing sullenly in the corner, cows drunk on fermented sileage uttering moos with drunken umlauts on them, a pit band tootling and blatting at one another. I miss throwaway lines about Beethoven just making you want to invade Poland. I miss bad puns and filk that I can't quite place to its source. Most of all I miss great writing.

On the other hand, Against the Day runs 1085 pages and is too big to fit in any handbag I own. It's a commitment not just in time and attention, but also to carrying a totebag so that I'll be able to read on the subway. And I'm still traumatized by having taken notes to try to get a handle on Gravity's Rainbow.

I'd like to finish Against the Day before Pynchon's new work, Inherent Vice, is released August 4th. I'm enough of a fangirl to want the experience of reading the new release when it's actually new--not when there's already a consensus opinion about it among other nonprofessional readers, not when it comes out in paperback, not when it's canonized in a course somewhere. And I'd like to have finished the previous work before starting the new one. (Yes, I most certainly do understand how dorky this sounds.)

As for the blog, I need the discipline. Two months to read over a thousand pages--over a thousand pages that are fun and funny but not easy or fast--that's a lot of discipline. Here goes.

In which a Pynchon reader with a short attention span attempts to read Against the Day

2009-06-08T11:04:00.002-04:00

This is a blog about reading Thomas Pynchon's novel, Against the Day.