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

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: Parts 3.4-3.5: Bilocations

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.

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 2.5-2.8: Iceland Spar

• 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.

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.