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.