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

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: Part 4.3: Against the Day

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 3.13-3.15: Bilocations

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

Where We're At: Parts 2.12-2.16

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)

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

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.