Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 10: Line 6 (111)

 Indeed, the backs of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human hats.

* * * * * * * * * *

In some ways, I've come to believe that Pynchon simply retains every bit of trivia about history and society and cows and phalluses and eras and decades because he always manages to casually write sentences that convince me of it. Maybe I'm just naïve and every author who writes a book that takes place in a past era researches it to such a degree that they also would never make the mistake of saying "the backs of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human heads" in an era where everybody wore hats constantly.

Because in other ways, it's also possible Thomas Pynchon makes tons and tons of mistakes and the magic is how he's convinced me that every single thing he writes is accurate. It's much the same way in that I believe everything he writes about actually happened, historically, until somebody tells me otherwise. So until I see a documentary that expressly states that child aeronauts were not flying airships around the world in 1893, I'm going to go on believing that's the historical part of this novel and not the fiction part.

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 10: Line 5 (110)

 "The Great Bovine City of the World," breathed Lindsay in wonder.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sure, Lindsay's talking about the amount of cows he can see in the Stockyards but we know the subtext, right? Right?!

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 10: Line 4 (109)

 Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways in a Cartesian grid, sketched in sepia, mile on mile.

* * * * * * * * * *

Can you get a better mental image than this in such succinct language? Basically, the kids are looking down at an old map of Chicago. But it also evokes how gray the entire place is. Four lines into the second section and I'm fucking depressed. But at least the Chums are excited! So much to look at! And that's just the terrible, disgusting, poverty-filled streets of Chicago! Wait until they get to the World's Fair and they get to see some beautiful things!

I've always thought of American cities as Cartesian grids and European cities as random fucking scribbles. But I never really thought about East Coast cities much. Some of the older ones are probably labyrinths, right?!

I grew up in California so the amount I know about the East Coast is less than the amount I know about everything else which is almost nothing. But I know all about surfing!

That's not true. I spent all of my youth playing Warhammer.

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 10: Line 3 (108)

 In the Stockyards, workers coming off shift, overwhelmingly of the Roman faith, able to detach from earth and blood for a few precious seconds, looked up at the airship in wonder, imagining a detachment of not necessarily helpful angels.

* * * * * * * * * *

There's a lot to un(meat)pack in this one! Ha ha!

I grew up areligious so I've always had a tough time distinguishing the differences of all the various types of Christianity. So labeling the workers "of the Roman faith" probably expresses something that my non-religious upbringing and ignorance of various faiths occludes from my view. But it seems to me it's just part of the pessimism of these poor workers. It's also probably a means to describe them, from an oblique angle, as immigrants.

So here we have some workers leaving the blood and the stench and the mud and the mortality of the Stockyards gaining a moment to look up at a truly wonderous sight and then thinking, "Oh fuck. What now?" Instead of, you know, marveling at the glory of this passing airship.

At first I thought maybe it was something in Roman Catholicism that makes them think these descending angels were not beneficent. But then I talked over the ramifications of nationality and Victorian era Chicago and Roman Catholicism and the working class with the Non-Certified Spouse and came to the conclusion that all of this contributes to creating a person who would not assume a positive outcome in any situation.

Also maybe they just figured, "Whelp. Everything sucks and now it's Revelations time! I fucking knew it!"

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 10: Line 2 (107)

 Somewhere down there was the White City promised in the Columbian Exposition brochures, somewhere among the tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke, the effluvia of butchery unremitting, into which the buildings of the leagues of city lying downwind retreated, like children into sleep which bringeth not reprieve from the day.

* * * * * * * * * *

How much time and money and labor and planning and passion and dedication went into building a possible version of a beautiful world while ignoring the actual world in which this faux Utopia managed to disappear? Shallow declarations and uplifting images of the way we profess we want the world to be is America's greatest commodity. "Look at this beautiful thing we've created! Look at the way the world will be when we utilize technology and capital to invest in people! The world can be a wonder and a marvel!" think the people walking about the Chicago World's Fair. And at the end of the day, bellies full of treats from around the world and minds stuffed to bursting with possibilities, they leave the confines of the White City and head back into the reek of slaughter lying over every life and the knife-filled alleys patrolled by corrupt police and their one room tenement with one oil lantern and no heat where they have not had a decent dream of the future for as far back as they can remember.

Aha. I see it now. The White City is the daylit fiction that the Chums of Chance have come to support. The dark conjugate of that is Chicago and the rest of the real world. The World's Fair is a mind fuck, a moment of mass hypnosis to convince the poor and the working class that the world isn't the giant cow-murder-smelling shithole they've been living their entire lives in. And here come the Chums of Chance in their cheerleading outfits for America, their ship wrapped in patriotic bunting, to declare, "America is the greatest nation on Earth!" Say it enough and even a couple who just lost their child to malnutrition might just believe it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Postscript: Oh, hey! Look at that! I figured it out already. Ignore the last postscript!

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 10: Line 1 (106)

 As they came in low over the Stockyards, the smell found them, the smell and the uproar of flesh learning its mortality—like the dark conjugate of some daylit fiction they had flown here, as appeared increasingly likely, to help promote.

* * * * * * * * * *

After the first line of the book, this was the next line that suggested to me that I needed to carefully explore every line.

Some of you might be thinking, "Is this how you do that? Do you think the definition of 'explicate' is to digress continuously and then say something obvious about each line?" And to that, I refuse to dignify it with a coherent response! Instead, you just get a raspberry.

"Thbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpt!"

After I read this line, I read it again. And again. And at least fifteen more times. Then I headed over to Twitter to say, "It's not a Pynchon novel if you can understand every single sentence." But guess what? I think I have a much better handle on it now than when I first read it!

The first half is easy and uncomfortable. The Chums have made it to Chicago and the proof is the famous stockyards where so many cows are butchered every day that nobody can avoid the smell and what that smell means: delicious hamburgers. And we all know delicious hamburgers make us think of death when we'll never again get to have one. That's what's meant by "flesh learning its mortality."

But the second half had me stumped. What the hell does "the dark conjugate of some daylit fiction" mean?! But now that I'm a little more familiar with the Chums of Chance because I read each sentence so closely, I think I got it!

They're in town to promote some big government lie, a lie which will hide some "dark conjugate" which compares to the killing fields of the Chicago stockyard. The daylit fiction is the government lie. The terrible thing being covered up is the dark conjugate. And they've come to promote the lie. The first half of the sentence is there both to show they've arrived in Chicago and to be an example of the terrible thing they're supposed to help hide from the public.

I don't know what that is even though I've already read this chapter once. Maybe I was too dumb to catch it the first time; maybe it isn't revealed yet (or ever will be! I mean, have you read Gravity's Rainbow?). Or maybe the dark secret, if we're comparing it to killing fields, has to do with H. H. Holmes!

I know I'm being overly whimsical and facetious but I'm trying really hard not to let the line "the uproar of flesh learning its mortality" turn me back into a vegetarian. I'm not much of a meat eater now (probably a holdover from having been vegetarian through most of my thirties because I saw one of those PBS documentaries about the Japanese village that massacres dolphins and I finally couldn't be a part of it anymore (I'd been having a tough time for years before that justifying any kind of meat eating or, even, killing of bugs. Just the thought of the creature's existence suddenly ending, and me being the cause, was causing me great strife and anxiety)). But eventually the grinding of the years and a general apathy toward everything and the slow erosion of one's sense of wonder and, ultimately, just being a lazy asshole filed off any feelings of guilt or remorse I had and I went back to, occasionally, eating meat.

Welcome back, tacos!

* * * * * * * * * *

Postscript: Oh! Duh! The "daylit fiction" is the Fair! A celebration of the exact opposite of the horror of The Stockyards. The Fair is supposedly mankind at its best! A promotion of all that man can achieve! And just a few blocks away is the horror of what mankind actually does! Wholesale slaughter and terrible working conditions and poor pay to the people who have been hired to do that slaughtering!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Lines 104-105

 "You'll see. In time, of course."

* * * * * * * * * *

Chick might see "in time" but I doubt the readers will. Pynchon is going to start discussing other characters and their problems and completely forget that I want to know how up is also down and where up/down winds up that is so much like Earth that it's disappointing.

I bet Thomas Pynchon would love to have more time than the measly amount us humans are given so that he could write all the Chums of Chance books as young adult literature. Those books would be so good that they would force all that other popular young adult novels about Harry Potters and Katniss Everdeens and Snickety Whip-its to suck their dicks.

That might sound harsh because it's a metaphor where one object that is a book makes other objects which are also books suck the dick the book doesn't actually have. And that would be wrong if the books were people. But since books are just books and sucking dick is actually a good thing that makes a lot of people happy, it's really just an icky thing to write about non-consensual behavior and I probably shouldn't have written it. Especially if I ever want my dreams of hosting Jeopardy to come true.

But at least I didn't say Pynchon's Chums of Chance young adult novels were also priests.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 103

 "These are mysteries of the profession," Chick supposed.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh, so world traveling boy adventurer is a profession, is it? Why didn't anybody tell me this when I was eight? I hate adults.

Maybe it wasn't the adults' fault. Maybe it was my lack of vision and ambition. It's not like I didn't grow up watching In Search of . . . my entire young life. There were mysteries out there to discover and what was I doing about them at eight years old? Absolutely nothing, that's what! I could have gone out and built an airship like those puppets in Outerscope on that psychedelic kid's show Vegetable Soup. I could have hopped on my bike and patrolled my neighborhood for paranormal goings on! I could have experimented with talking to plants to see if they understood what I was saying. But did I do any of that? No! I was too busy sitting in my fake wood paneled family room on a paisley bean bag recording myself reading stories from Choose Your Own Adventure books so that I could fall asleep listening to myself tell me stories later! What a dumb prick I was!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Lines 98-102

 "Not exactly. No. Another 'surface,' but an earthly one. Often to our regret, all too earthly. More than that, I am reluctant—"

* * * * * * * * * *

So not another planet. That means there's something in the air where you'll land. But after coming down? So is it that heaven is above the Earth but upside down with Earth in their sky? And I say heaven because Randolph's disappointment in the place he's hinting at implies he (and others) expected the place to be better than Earth. "All too earthly" speaks volumes about what those horny angels must be getting up to.

Spoiler Alert: I'm going to spoil the end of this chapter! But I won't spoil any other media entertainment in a joking way so don't worry! Unless it's about Transformers: The Movie. I might spoil that!

So later, we discover the boys travel down into the Earth and through it via airship. In this way, they go down until they're going up so it's the opposite of what Randolph is saying (except that eventually, from the center of the Earth, you go up until you're going down, right?! But I don't think that's what Randolph means!). But in no way do I think Randolph is "regretful" of how the gnomes and people inside the earth are "all too earthly." Nobody has expectations of what they would be like and, if they had, they would absolutely expect them to be earthly because they're entirely of the Earth! They would be supra-earthly!

But heavenly beings should not be earthly. Which means the Chums of Chance must have a book entitled The Chums of Chance Meet God and His Fornicating Angelic Host.

Also, remember how I suspected Randolph might be an angel? Maybe that's why the "regret." Because he feels he doesn't live up to what earthlings expect from angels! He's lamenting his own failings and his own "earthiness."

Anyway, the Chums of Chance have definitely sailed to heaven.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 97

 "Approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" Chick persisted.

* * * * * * * * * *

This is what I thought, Chick! We're like the same person! Petulant, insulting, unlikeable, constantly chased and reviled by Klansmen! It's either a coincidence that Thomas Pynchon created a character that embodies all of my character traits or it's an international conspiracy. I know which one Pynchon would support.

At what point in the atmosphere of a planet do you go from going "up" to going "out"? And then what direction are you going once you've broken the bonds of a planet's overwhelming gravitational pull? What do directions mean in space? Are all space directions relative to the home planet of the beings traveling through it? You probably have to give directions as if you're telling somebody how to get to Powell's in Portland except you've lived there for decades and just never really learned the street names so you have to give relative directions based on local landmarks and visual cues. "Head toward that cluster of three bright blue stars until Andromeda is directly out the port window and then turn upward 90 degrees until you see the tail end of the constellation Taurus. Head straight toward that until you're momentarily blinded by a pulsar from about 45 degrees out of the starboard side of your forward viewscreen. At that moment, stop! There's a massive black hole straight ahead so you're going to want to go around it. Sure, it'll add three light years to your overall mileage but you'll save a ton of time. That is if time has any meaning after being sucked into a black hole. Ha ha! Anyway, if you keep on straight from there, you should see the flashing neon lights of the new and incredibly immense Powell's New and Used Books on Perblexy IV. Sure, they don't really sell used books at used books prices but they sure have decimated the small mom and pop book stores that did! You'll love it!"

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 96

 "Shh!" warned Randolph St. Cosmo.

* * * * * * * * * *

Shh? They're a mile in the air! Who's going to hear them?!

Oh no! The Inconvenience is riddled with listening devices! What kind of an organization have these kids gotten themselves mixed up in?!

On a side note, nobody ever said to me, "You should read Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. It's basically The Little Rascals written by the Wobblies." Then I would have said, "Dude, you took too many mushrooms." And then they would have said, "Can you take too many mushrooms?" And then I would have said, "How long have we been standing at this urinal?"

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 95

 "So . . . if you went up high enough, you'd be going down again?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Chick Counterfly connects his thought with Randolph's analogy and his brain begins to melt (as noted by the italicized "down"). What the gruff has he signed on for?!

How many entries will I need to say "what the gruff" before people begin to think it's an actual saying and start using it?

This connection that Chick makes either proves he's super smart and will make a terrific Chum of Chance or it shows he's super stupid and thinks analogies have to work on every level just like the thing they're analogizing. Also, it proves he's got some Slothrop in him because he's sniffing out this conspiracy that up and down are practically the same thing faster than Scooby Doo sniffs out a meatball sub.

It's too bad meatball subs weren't the weekly real estate crime lord because then Scooby Doo would have really been the hero of the show instead of just a terrified dog being dragged into situations that his owners know terrify the fuck out of him. It's like—analogy time!—if somebody's dog hated fireworks but every day you chained your dog out back and shot bottle rockets off in front of him. Then you gave him doggy drugs to feel justified in your sadism. "Good boy! You were so scared for the whole half hour! Have some snacks!"

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 94

 The skyship commander shrugged uncomfortably.

* * * * * * * * * *

Either Randolph St. Cosmo's uniform is too tight or Chick Counterfly has just broached a dangerous subject whose ramifications could destroy the common person's view of the world. Because once you discover that north is also south and up is also down and reality is junk science that owes everything to perception and modes of perception and chemical variances in the brain and an author who can change the world at his whim, how do you keep your sanity?!

Also, is this the first hint of conspiracy? The upside of reading a book one sentence at a time is that you spend a far greater time thinking about every sentence. The downside of reading a book one sentence at a time is that a week can pass between a few paragraphs and my memory isn't the best which means I can easily lose context from one line to the next.

I really should only do this with books I'm re-reading! I'll try to remember that for the next blog I write! Maybe I'll do House of Leaves one line at a time!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 93

 "Yes."

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh, look how clever you are, you clever blogger with the clever idea you! What are you going to do now?! Are you going to explicate this line divorced from the text?! It's just a stupid affirmative! It doesn't mean anything on its own! Unless you're Yoko Ono fishing for John Lennon, I guess. But other than that, it needs context! What is the yes in reference to?! Oh no. It can't be. I thought natural law was in effect in this book!

This is Randolph St. Cosmo declaring that Chick is correct that if you go north and pass over the Pole, you'll find yourself going south. Fine. That's not a shocker. But he's saying it in Chick's deconstruction of the analogy that going up is like going north. So the only conclusion to draw from this "yes" is that if you go up far enough, you'll pass some space where you're suddenly going down! That's crazy!

Oh wait. It isn't crazy at all! It's exactly what happened when those Americans landed on the moon! They went up so far that they suddenly started going down and then landed on the moon. Whew! Okay, good. I figured I could count on Lindsay's declaration that nobody had escaped to the realm of the counterfactual!

Also, would I have reached that conclusion had I not already read ahead? Maybe! There's no way to tell for sure though!

I hope I didn't miss anything here like how I missed that bit where Lindsay corrected Chick's use of ain't by declaring isn't was more preferable when in the way Chick used "ain't," "isn't" wouldn't have worked either. I knew Lindsay was just one of those annoying pedants who simply follows rules for rules' sake. Is that the proper punctuation of "rules for rules' sake"? I wish Lindsay were here to correct me.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 92

 "But," it occurred to Chick, "if you keep going far enough north, eventually you pass over the Pole, and then you're heading south again."

* * * * * * * * * *

And thus the super galaxy brain meme was invented by Chick Counterfly in 1893.

This sounds like anybody on acid. I once went on a rant about how you press the pause button to pause the tape in the VCR but then you hit the pause button again to get it to play instead of hitting the play button. Right now, you're thinking, "Um. What? So. You can probably hit play too, right? Who cares?!" But you're only thinking that because you're not currently on LSD. Although if you are currently on LSD and you did just read that, I apologize for blowing your mind.

Here's the thing: I would totally be making fun of Chick Counterfly believing that every aspect of an analogy needs to be accurate to be a good analogy except I've read the rest of this conversation already and, apparently, Randolph St. Cosmo really thought this thing through. It's super accurate!

But pretend I didn't know that yet! Here's the thing with Chick thinking the analogy somehow needs to be iron clad. Does he expect Randolph to say, "Oh, yeah. That's true so I guess my analogy doesn't make complete sense. I'll have to think up another." Except if your analogy has to perfectly mirror the situation it is analogizing then you might as well just state the original situation! The only comparative story that's going to match your story is your original story!

Analogies are terrible anyway. I'm not saying they're not interesting or can be cute or whimsical or fun! But the only reason anybody makes an analogy is because the analogy makes the original situation look better or worse to the person you're debating. Also, if you think the original statement is too confusing and needs to be stated by using an example of a different situation that's similar, what makes you think your analogy is going to be understood without its own analogy?! Can we just discuss the matter at hand and stop with all this nonsense?!

Oh man. I think I'm arguing Lindsay's side of this! I approve of the way Lindsay just stated the facts! Except didn't I come to the conclusion that Lindsay's statement of the natural law that temperature decreases with altitude was just an analogy for following the rules aboard ship?! I did! I totally did! So Lindsay is actually terrible still.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 91

 He stood blinking, as if expecting comment.

* * * * * * * * * *

Randolph really, really thinks Chick is thick! "Was that too much information for the dopey lad?" worried Randolph Street Cosmo. "Does he understand 'north' and 'up'?! I hope he asks questions if he doesn't quite understand what I'm saying. What if he's never been north? How could he understand it gets colder by going up if he doesn't know it gets colder by going north?! I should probably have dumbed it down even further! 'Up! Sky! Brr!' would have been better, probably!"

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 90

 "Going up is like going north."

* * * * * * * * * *

Well, Randolph really does think Chick's thick, doesn't he? "Go north. Get cold! Go up. Get cold! Same-same! See?"

These are American kids speaking in American geographic terms so I won't bring up how, in the opposite situation below the Equator, going south is also like going up. You'd think going south would be like going down!

Oh, dammit! I brought it up. Anyway, Chick is smarter than anybody gives him credit for because he's got his own comments to Randolph's "Let's Make Science Easy for the Dumb Kid" statement.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 89

 "Here it is in a nutshell," Randolph confided later.

* * * * * * * * * *

Lindsay, in creating an analogy to remind Chick to follow the rules, gave a long-winded answer to why Chick was so cold when in the air, and maybe Randolph thinks Lindsay used words Chick wouldn't have understood so Randolph decides to break it down in a clearer, shorter, and more common way. You can't assume the boy you picked up in the swamp being chased by members of the KKK after his father rooked the local populace and fled to be well educated.

Randolph shows his wisdom as leader, as well, by taking Chick aside later where they can speak alone so as not to expose Chick's ignorance in front of the others, and to save him some embarrassment.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 86-88

 "Do not imagine," Lindsay instructed, "that in coming aboard Inconvenience you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual. There may not be mangrove swamps or lynch law up here, but we must nonetheless live with the constraints of the given world, notable among them the decrease in temperature with altitude. Eventually your sensitivities in that regard should moderate, and in the meantime"—tossing him a foul-weather cloak of black Japanese goatskin with C. OF C. PROPERTY stenciled in bright yellow on the back—"this is to be considered as a transitional garment only, until such time as you adapt to these altitudes and, if fortunate, learn the lessons of unpremeditated habitude among them."

* * * * * * * * * *

In other words, this isn't The Twilight Zone, bub. Things may seem fantastic or supranormal flying up in the sky but it's still the same world as that which occurs below and in the rest of the book. This may be a warning not just to Chick but to the reader. Pynchon is noting that while things are definitely different than the world of the reader, they aren't different in a fantastical, higgledy-piggledy way. Yes, there were almost certainly not battalions of young boys flying airships about the world having adventures. But at least they're not riding dragons! And while some of their adventures might push the boundaries of what we know as fact, they retain their believability of the 1893 world and the lower limits of the knowledge and the upper limits of the imagination of the people of the time.

Also, Lindsay might just be making small talk about his favorite thing in the world: rules. "Don't get it into your head that we're up here to engage in raw hedonism above the clouds, ignoring the basic and decent societal laws of mankind! We follow rules too!"

Or maybe Lindsay just figures Chick is an idiot. "Natural law same, you understand. Same-same down below as up above. Different but same!"

Lindsay is a jerk.

Whoops! That was what I had to say on just Line 86 before I remembered that I'm grouping all lines which appear in the same quotations as one blog entry! So let's dive into the rest of Lindsay's rant!

It seems like Lindsay is just using the temperatures decrease with altitude constraint of the world as a metaphor for all the other rules Lindsay expects Chick to learn to habitude among. The Japanese coat (does the C. OF C. PROPERTY label the coat or the boy in the coat?) is an example of Chick's provisional status among the boys. They will allow some leeway for Chick's ignorance of the rules, as the coat gives him some leeway to remain comfortable in large temperature shifts, but he must, at some point, be able to perform his duties sans jacket and sans managerial oversight.

Plus he might just be informing Chick about how cold it gets. Although does it make much sense to indicate that the Chums of Chance should do their duty in the sky without jackets to protect from the cold? That's why it must be a metaphor! I'm sure the lads wear jackets all the time, as needed!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 85

 When confronted by Lindsay Noseworth, the lad in his defense could only chatter, "C-c-cold!"

* * * * * * * * * *

The subtext here is that Lindsay Noseworth definitely thought Chick was stealing because Chick is a poor vagabond child who can't be trusted as far as the KKK could throw him. Lindsay "confronted" Chick for "unauthorizedly" "rummaging" for a jacket. I suppose Lindsay's suspicions weren't totally inaccurate seeing as how earlier in the story, Chick considered taking and pawning the silverware. So even though I despise narcs and hall monitors and uncharitable bastards, I can't totally fault Lindsay for keeping an eye on the new kid.

Although what did Lindsay think was Chick's plan? Steal all the arctic gear and bail over the side to escape?!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Pages 8-9: Line 84

 The first few times aloft, he did his duty without complaint but one day was discovered unauthorizedly rummaging through a locker containing various items of arctic gear.

* * * * * * * * * *

Weird to think Chick did his duty without complaint. I guess Pynchon didn't say "did his duty without insulting the rest of the crew" which is a different thing altogether. He probably also felt grateful, in his way, to have been rescued from his vagabond, fatherless life in KKK territory. He was probably afraid of being abandoned again if he didn't just suck it up and do his duty.

The term "unauthorizedly" is a definite flag that Lindsay Noseworth was the one who discovered him. Who else would give a damn that one of the kids was just trying to stay warm?! Especially the new kid who maybe didn't know he had to fill out a bunch of requisition forms just to get a damned jacket.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 83

 Like most "rookies" in the organization, Chick had found his initial difficulties to lie not so much with velocity as with altitude, and the changes in air-pressure and temperature that went along with it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Why is the word "rookies" in quotes in the previous line? My supposition, knowing that Pynchon is the author, is that the word must be fairly new to the time and the quotation marks suggest it's some newfangled slang. Looking up its etymology, I see it's a late 19th century word stemming from recruit and rook (I mean, obviously rook more than recruit but who am I to suggest that for certain? Susie Dent?). The interesting thing is that "rook" means to cheat or swindle. So what kind of attitude is that? Expecting the new guy to be a cheater and a swindler?! Oh wait! I get it! The "rookie" is the guy being swindled! So the new rookie recruit would be a guy who got suckered into joining the military like a big dumb dumby!

Rudyard Kipling was first credited with using it in Barrack-room Ballads from 1892. That wouldn't mean it's brand new but it's gotta be close to brand new if it first sees print in 1892. Unless he made it up, which I doubt. Also, I should now be hung from the side of the Inconvenience by Lindsay for using the word "gotta."

My Children's Lit professor at San Jose State would have emphasized the words Pynchon used in this sentence that sound like they're describing Chick: "lie," "pressure," and "altitude" which suggests "attitude" if you're terrible at reading and/or poetical by nature.

Imagine being a terrestrial kid who has lived their whole life on the ground in the 19th century. And now imagine being in this fanciful airship for the first time. You're moving faster than you've ever moved before. You're higher than you've ever been before. You're miraculously flying which, until then, you've only known angels, aliens, and ghosts to have done. And maybe birds and bugs but that's edging into too erotic a territory for me! Now you're also learning that as you go higher, your head feels weird and your ears hurt and suddenly you're cold. And you're moving faster so your stomach is queasy and you've got an exciting feeling down in your bowels (the good bowels not the gross bowels!). That's a lot to deal with!

Anyway, it's not surprising that Chick doesn't have a problem with velocity. He's a cool cat who would probably be wearing a leather jacket and riding fast motorcycles if he had been born in the 60s.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 82

 "Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.

* * * * * * * * * *

There was a time when people used expressions that they don't use anymore and it's a shame. I think it's because we realized that every unique word could just be replaced by its boring and mundane equivalent with "fucking" tacked on the front. So instead of feeling "Crackerjack!", today Chick would, as Tony the Tiger says, feel "fucking great!"

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 81

 "Feeling all right, Counterfly?"

* * * * * * * * * *

"Feeling all right means there's nothing left" seems like something your Great Uncle might say at a family reunion after which he'd wander off leaving you to wonder if he had finished the thought before heading back to get more potato salad.

I guess this means Randolph cares about his crew and he's checking up on them? Also maybe this indicates that he noticed Chick enjoying himself, so it's a bit sarcastic. "Oh, not slinging insults, I see? Are you feeling okay?"

I haven't spent enough time with the characters to know what Randolph St. Cosmo's intonation might be.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 80

 "That could put us in Chicago before nightfall," reckoned Randolph St. Cosmo.

* * * * * * * * * *

What Pynchon is expressing here is that the Chums of Chance will soon be at the Chicago's World Fair (aka the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago if you like lengthier—probably girthier—names). Possibly before nightfall.

Is this the moment where the reader experiences the title of the novel? They're racing against the day to get to Chicago! Hmm, no, probably not.

Since this line seems short on subtext, maybe the real point of this sentence is to show how Pynchon can't ever shorten Randolph St. Cosmo's name. That's some weird cosmic angel shit right there, right?

I haven't done an anagram of Randolph St. Cosmo's name because I can't come up with anything clever. I mean, how do I explain "Scalp door months" or "Maths pond colors"? And I've just interpreted his name as a kind of vague feeling. But maybe you're supposed to read "Randolph" as sort of "random" and "Cosmo" as cosmic so that we get the view of Randolph's universe as chaotic and random but, generally, tending toward good ("St."). Unless the "St." is supposed to be read as "street"! Then maybe his name is the intersection between randomness and the cosmic (which isn't random because it relies on consistent natural laws even if those laws produce events that are basically random).

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 79

 "We're doing a way better than a mile a minute," remarked Chick Counterfly from the control-console, unable to eliminate from his voice a certain awe.

* * * * * * * * * *

If I were to read the above line, I would assume that the person who typed it into their blog did a typo. But I did not. It's probably a regional way of saying the thing Chick is saying, like embarrassingly adding the article "the" in front of freeway numbers when you live in Southern California (the gross and icky California) but intelligently leaving the article off freeway numbers when you live in Northern California (the good and proper California). As a Northern Californian, I would have phrased Chick's statement like this: "We're doing a ways better than a mile a minute" or "We're doing way better than a mile a minute." But I would not have said it exactly like he said it.

Or she! I'm still not backing off my assumption that Chick Counterfly is both a woman and a lover of silverware. One of the greatest adventure tropes in pre-modern times is that of the young woman pretending to be a man so as to experience the world freely. Maybe that trope is even a modern trope! I wouldn't know because I'm a man so I can walk around at night without fearing some other man is going to do something awful to me. I mean, another man might do something awful to me! But it's not a presupposition like it is for a woman because men are scarier than bears and mountain lions and probably sharks. It's probably because sharks and bears and mountain lions can love unconditionally but men cannot.

This sentence shows that Chick Counterfly isn't just the insult comic of the crew who doesn't really want to be there. Chick is fascinated with the ship and its abilities and seems to truly want to be an integral part of this life. Of course, what other option does Chick have, having recently become a dead member of this haunting ghost ship? Presumably, of course! Chick might be a living boy and she also might be an undead girl! Or some combination of those! Who can really know (other than the people who have already read this book and Thomas Pynchon, of course)?

The phrase "unable to eliminate" reminds us that Chick still wants to be seen as the apathetic rebel who couldn't give two toots about anything but his emotional excitement in the grip of crewing the ship betrays him.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 78

 The Screw device soon accelerated the ship to a speed which, added to that of the wind from directly astern, made it nearly invisible from the ground.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh yeah! Remember how we were, plotwise, actually aboard the Inconvenience headed to Chicago dealing with the wind change when that story about Chick Counterfly's origin began? Now Pynchon just drops us back in like nothing happened. It's not as confusing here because the story, so far, is relatively straightforward. But try to keep your head wrapped around the plot when Pynchon does shit like this in Gravity's Rainbow. Without any warning, Pynchon will drop you into a story about some guy being drugged for an experiment and it'll happen while you're still confused over the way the chapter started with some list of different ways the phrase "The Kenosha Kid" can be communicated to another person and then suddenly the character is in some club trying to fish his harmonica out of a toilet while worried about being ass-fucked by the bathroom attendant (who is also almost certainly Malcom X) so he climbs deeper into the system where he's flushed further down into some underwater city where there is only one of everything and he meets a cowboy and the cowboy's sidekick and I'd go on but I'm not sure I ever really found my way through to the other side. I just shrugged and went on to the next section hoping it would be less confusing!

This section helps clarify some of my questions about the people who had shit and piss randomly rain down on their heads and why they would just shrug and go about their lives by somehow getting over it and not hunting down the people who shit on them with a thirst for vengeance unknown by even God Himself. The airship was just too fast for people on the ground to see! That totally makes sense. I guess The Screw device gave the ship warp speed powers.

Remember that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard and the crew of the Enterprise learned that warp travel was tearing down the fabric of the universe? And their solution was not to stop using warp drives but to cut their speed in half and then hope everybody else in the Federation (as well as their enemies) would follow their lead, thus doubling the amount of time before the fabric of the universe fell apart? That was a pretty good story to show how far mankind had gone that they're instantly willing to sort of but not really stop participating in actions that will destroy their home (in this case, the universe; in the allegorical point of the case, the Earth). It's painted as responsible but it also contains the germ of what makes humanity suck. The Federation is all, "Well, yes, warp drives are destroying the universe. But we really like warp drives and we pretty much need warp drives now and what? We're supposed to totally stop using them until we can come up with something different? That's crazy. We'll just use them a little bit for now." But then the Enterprise represents America (right?) so they still go faster than Warp Five whenever they feel they need to. "Oh, yeah, sure. We have limits on warp speed for environmental concerns that won't rear their ugly heads for thousands of years but right now, in this second, we really have to get Worf to some Klingon festival in twelve hours."

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 77

 And Chick Counterfly, for better or worse, had remained. . . .

* * * * * * * * * *

Did you know I'm also discussing Gravity's Rainbow and Vonnegut's Player Piano over on my sister blog, Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea? That's also where I discuss comic books when I'm in the mood. But lately I haven't been in the mood because I've been reading more serious things where most of the characters don't wear form fitting outfits that show everything and nothing all at the same time. I mean, Booster Gold has some incredible abs and pecs and the other muscles but you can't see one wrinkle of his cock. You can't even see he has a cock! Or balls! He's just a Ken doll. That's the most unrealistic thing about comic books. Even in that scene in Good Omens when Jon Hamm as Gabriel is jogging in sweat pants, you can see his massive cock! I'm assuming it's massive when it's erect because he's just so damned confident! You don't attain that kind of confidence as a male without having a penis that shouts, "I could do porn if I wasn't so good looking!"

I just realized this would have been a good entry for another sonnet! The best entries for sonnets are the self-explanatory short ones with just the right amount of subtext to infuse the stanzas with a point and an eventual turn or summation. I could probably have made quite a bit of subtext out of that "for better or worse" part, especially with my theory that the Chums of Chance are undead monsters forced to roam the skies for eternity, like those Ghost Riders that country folk sometimes sing about. That's the "for worse" part! The "for better" part is that they might be angels or just ghosts trying to make the world a better place to redeem them for their past crimes after which they can move on to Heaven. But if that were the case, wouldn't the airship be called Purgatory instead of Inconvenience? Although Purgatory was created to be a kind of inconvenience.

Now that I've guessed Pynchon's airship is Purgatory, is he going to change tactics and instead make it some old rich guy's institute running paranormal experiments on reality instead?!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 76

 In time, however, the ominously cloaked rustics, perhaps in superstitious fear of that very machinery, had dispersed to their homes and haunts.

* * * * * * * * * *

What Pynchon is saying here is that racist bigots are superstitious hicks who might not just live in houses but also haunts. The definition for a haunt is "a place frequented by a specified person or group of people" such as a Country Club or a Whites Only Restroom. Notice that Pynchon doesn't remark on their economic fears or their nice and engaging qualities which they only show to other people who look, act, and think like them. Also, the use of "superstitious fear" in regards to a strange piece of scientific equipment can also be extrapolated to how they view other things they aren't familiar with, like people of other races or, probably, cats & spiders.

Take that, racists trying to read Pynchon! Do you think that's a thing or do you think racists only read Nietzsche and then only those curated by his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche? Also I'm curious about the things they would brag about reading and not the things that would automatically out them as bigots and racists. 

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 75

 It had been a night of sleepless precaution lest sparks from the torches of the mob drift anywhere near the hydrogen-generating apparatus and devastation result.

* * * * * * * * * *

If I knew a guy and I was all, "I sure could use a torch later," and he whipped me up a torch, I would totally suspect he was a racist jerk. Also why would I need a torch later? Is it the end times and part of Judgment Day that wasn't encoded in Revelations was that batteries would stop working and also I was too lazy to use my hand crank flashlight? But that's kind of the point! If a guy knows how to make a torch that isn't just trying to light the end of a dry branch with a Zippo, he's got some fucking secrets that maybe I don't want to know about.

Although at this point in history, I'm fairly confident that nearly all Republicans know how to make torches. No wait! I take that back. Nearly nobody knows how to make torches anymore which is why all those racists trying to save statues of Confederate officers went to Lowe's and bought out all the tiki torches.

Can you imagine somebody trying to save statues of Confederate officers using the excuse that destroying them is destroying history without knowing the actual history of why those statues were erected and when? The nerve of some racist asshole telling everybody that these statues tell some kind of historical story that isn't just "a bunch of scared white assholes decided to erect these statues in the face of civil rights movements as a means to intimidate Black Americans." Confederate officer statues are the sculpture equivalent of a dog pissing on a tree. History? More like pisstory!

Yes. You really nailed the landing on this entry, Me!

No wait! I forgot to discuss the line! Um, well, you see, all the Chums were nervous not just because the KKK, a bunch of villainous violent thugs, were surrounding their encampment but also because they had torches and the most famous thing about hydrogen is that it likes to react with oxygen especially around fire because it's an, um, oxidizer or something. So this line is meant to make the readers think of the Hindenburg and then to think "Oh the humanity" which leads them to thinking about humanity and how the Chums of Chance probably aren't human at all but angels or ghosts or aliens and also a dog.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Lines 73-74

 "There is nothing further to discuss—this fellow is to be granted asylum and, if he wishes, provisional membership in our Unit. There certainly remains to him no future down here."

* * * * * * * * * *

Randolph St. Cosmo comes to Chick's rescue because Randolph St. Cosmo is the name of an angel. Which suggests, especially since there's now no future for Chick "down here," that the Chums of Chance have more in common with Moore's Dead Dead Gang than I first thought. Is it possible the Chums of Chance are not supposed to interfere because they're ghosts and/or angels? I know us modern idiots have all been convinced by popular entertainment that all angels and ghosts do is intervene in our mortal affairs! But in 1893, I'm pretty sure all angels and ghosts were concerned with was making sure nobody sees anything sexually enticing.

In other words, Chick has just been lynched by the KKK so now he must carry on in the sky with the other poor wandering souls. But he doesn't know it yet! That's why he's a provisional member. He won't actually be a real Chum of Chance until he faces and accepts his terrestrial death.

Later we'll see that the Chums of Chance do age but I think that's just something ghosts and angels can do. They can appear to be any age they choose and the Chums of Chance probably choose to age albeit slower than living humans. That's probably why their adventures can span such a great space of time and they're still seen as lads. Randolph probably stopped aging at 18 and the others are slowly aging toward that, the aging process growing ever slower so that they never actually reach and then pass the age of the captain.

This sentence says none of that. But—and this is major Coast to Coast AM logic—if it caused me to think it, maybe it actually is there? At least I didn't write another sonnet!

Although what would a project like that look like? If I were to write one sonnet for every line in this book?! Man, don't tempt me, me!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 72

 "Noseworth, for mercy's sake!" cried Randolph St. Cosmo, who had been glancing anxiously out at the robed and hooded figures at the perimeter of the camp, the blazing torches they carried lighting each fold and wrinkle of their rude drapery with almost theatrical precision and casting weird shadows among the tupelo, cypress, and hickory.

* * * * * * * * * *

Anybody who has ever carried a torch while with at least one other person also carrying a torch was either chasing down a living monster, LARPing, or being a huge racist. You're declaring something quite specific when you go out in public with a bunch of other people and carry torches. It's a kind of intimidation that doesn't warrant the President of the United States declaring you might be "very good people." Unless, of course, what he meant to say was, "You're one of the kinds of people I like and I admire what you're doing."

But going out in a mob and carrying torches is the kind of thing you can do without consequence in a society that refuses to understand the things they don't want to understand. There's an American history of torchbearers which can only be ignored if you choose to ignore it and choosing to ignore it is as clear a message as carrying torches in a mob in public.

Pynchon paints an unavoidable picture of who these people are in this line. The theatrical precision shows they know what they're doing; they've choreographed the intimidation and terror. The torch-based lighting throws up disorienting and strange shadows, making them appear larger and more monstrous while also highlighting their anonymity by playing across the folds and wrinkles of their "rude drapery." These people are a menace. It's the whole point of it. To menace and to intimidate and to suppress the freedom of movement of those they despise for no logical reason at all.

And Randolph makes sure Lindsay knows this is no time for a lesson on language. These KKK, these despicable men, have close ties with (and often are they themselves) local people of power. They can get away with whatever they want. The Chums are in a dangerous situation and so is this boy Chick. The Prime Directive, or, um, "Charter" be damned; morality and humanity trump it. They must help the boy.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 71

 "In polite discourse," Lindsay hastened to correct him, "'isn't' is preferable to 'ain't.'"

* * * * * * * * * *

"In polite discourse," Lindsay corrected
Him, "'Isn't' is preferable to 'ain't,'"
Directed at one suspected of taint.
But grammar advice needs be rejected
By one, faint, pursued by unrespected
Supremacists protected by hoods. Plaint-
ive cries, by no saint, at men who would paint
Him up in tar and feathers collected.

There's a time and a place for pedantic
Turns of phrase but when someone's being chased
By men of evil intent, you can stick
Your Goddamned saccharine laced romantic
Notion of language as a pure and chaste
Idea up your arrogant man dick.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 70

 "When they're after a fellow, legal ain't got nothing to do with it—it's run, Yankee, run, and Katie bar the door."

* * * * * * * * * *

Sorry for that last entry. It couldn't be helped. Literally, it couldn't be. My brain just took over and what are my fingers supposed to do? Not type what my brain wants them to type? 90s kids would get it.

See? I don't know why I just typed that either! I mean, I know why I typed it! Because my brain told my hands to type it. But why did my brain ask my hands to type that?! It's a mystery! The only person who knows how brains work is that guy at the end of Pi. At least I hope or else . . . oh my God. What was that movie about?! What fucking happened at the end?!

Okay, never mind! I'm back now! I shook my head really fast and am going to finish this while my brain is rattled and distracted.

This is the first time I've heard the phrase "Katie bar the door." That's probably because I grew up in California where our colloquial phrases are things like "Dude!" and "As if!" and "Go home, valleys!" At first I thought it was one of those phrases that Pynchon dug up that had only been used in a short period of time between 1898 and 1895. But it seems to still be in use, mostly in the southern states of the U.S. It's easy enough to understand in context. "Trouble is coming so somebody, preferably a young lass named Katie, should bar the fucking door!"

Oh, in California, "fucking" is also one of our colloquial phrases.

Chick makes a valid point with his "legal ain't got nothing to do with it" statement. And he's right, by gum (not a Californian colloquialism)! How many times do Kirk and Picard forgo the Prime Directive when one of their crew is in danger? Probably a lot although I never kept track. And, yes, Chick isn't a crew member on the Inconvenience. But he's still making an important distinction: is obeying the letter of the law more important than saving a life? Some police think disregarding the law is as important as taking a life! Oh uh. I think my brain has come unrattled.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 69

 "You ain't from these parts," replied Chick, somewhat sharply.

* * * * * * * * * *

Nice.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 68

 "Much as we might be inclined to offer our protection," Lindsay had informed the agitated youth, "here upon the ground we are constrained by our Charter, which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched."

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm about two episodes away from finishing all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation so I know the Prime Directive when I see it. Although the Enterprise in The Next Generation doesn't really visit that many new worlds and new civilizations, no matter how many they imply they're going to visit in the opening monologue. They mostly remain in Federation Space dealing with diplomatic problems or doing scientific research on local space phenomena or telling the Cardassians to get back over their invisible space border (which works how? Are these territories in bubbles? Do the boundaries extend in both directions along one plane to infinity while maybe extending like a normal border along the other plane, weaving and wandering as if following some imaginary space river? There's a lot to be confused about in Star Trek but the one that always gets me are the space borders).

If the Inconvenience is basically the Enterprise of 1893 and the Chums of Chance are Starfleet Officers working for some Earth equivalent of a Galactic Federation, does that mean Lindsay might actually be a Vulcan?! Remember, there's something odd with that kid in that he's violent in his recriminations against proper speech, he's logical to a fault, and the dog can't detect his odor. He also hasn't used any contractions yet (he will in a few lines but that's only because he's repeating one used by Chick and offering a more formal one) which is absolutely a sign of an alien!

In many ways, Star Trek: The Next Generation is laughable, a veritable cocktail of mockable clichés and national stereotypes, one dimensional characters and Wesley Crusher's sweaters. But what makes it really work, even sometimes when the plot is actively working against it, is its earnestness. Nobody in the cast ever seems to be rolling their eyes about what they're doing; every script takes every moment as seriously as it can (unless it's a Barkley episode and then the audience is to understand that this one will be silly). Everybody is all in on portraying a future world of compassion, kindness, and a lack of need. And they're not even saying that the way the Federation does things is the correct way because every civilization will have faults. But at least one person on the crew will always be willing to stand against atrocity. I can mock it constantly as I watch it and yet I still love everything about it.

No, wait. I wouldn't mind disposing of the Data as Sherlock Holmes episodes and the Captain Picard as Dixon Hill. And don't get me started on the suicide/cloning machine that they call a "transporter." Like fuck that thing transports. I was convinced early on that it simply kills the person stepping into it and creates a clone on the other side. And while that was only my horrific theory, the show accidentally proved me right with the episode where a Riker clone turns up due to a transportation error. See? You don't get two Rikers if your machine isn't just cloning the person and disposing of the evidence by disintegrating the original! Everybody on that damned ship is the nth version of their original selves! Which makes it especially tragic when they finally talk both Barkley and Doctor Pulaski into stepping into one! Oh how I wept!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 8: Line 67

Since then Chick had lived from hand to mouth, until, at the town of Thick Bush, not far from the Chums' encampment, someone, recognizing him as the son of a notorious and widely sought "carpetbagger," had suggested an immediate application of tar and feathers to his person.

* * * * * * * * * *

 A son paying for his father's sins. Will this be a theme too?!

Also, yes, let's giggle at the name of the town. I probably should have written a sonnet about this line since Pynchon set up the rhymes with Chick, Dick, and Thick.

Remember the Schoolhouse Rock song, "Mother Necessity"? They should have come up with another called "Mother Ennui" because what else explains how many various and disturbing ways the human race has come up with to torture people? It's not like all the ways to torture people produce different results! It's almost certainly just torturers sitting around getting bored of stretching people on a rack or pulling out fingernails. I'm sure there were a lot of "What if we . . ." situations in the torture break room.

"What about a coffin full of spikes?!"
"Or a spike that somebody sits on upon which their own weight slowly impales them?"
"What about a screw that goes on the thumb?"
"What the hell do you mean by that? How does that work?"
"I don't know! But have you ever accidentally pulled your thumb back too far while building an instrument of torture? Mother Mary of Jesus of Nazareth, does that smart!"
"Ooh! Blasphemy! Let's put him in my new contraption: the starving rat in a cage strapped to your belly!"

And then, eventually, somebody came up with tarring and feathering. Although tarring and feathering is less like a mode of torture and just some stupid immature act of vengeance on somebody who did something as minor as dumping you. It's the old timey version of pouring bleach on their clothes or keying their car. It both hurts them in some way (physically, emotionally, or financially) and it also marks them so others can witness their shame!

"Oh shit! Watch out for old Cyrus! I saw him with his head covered in chicken feathers earlier today. He must have done some negligible wrong to the wrong person or was in the wrong place at the wrong time or just happened to be of a nationality that we're sort of hating on right now! Better not associate with him unless you want more of the same!"

Ha ha! I just remembered the name of the town again!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Pages 7-8: Line 66

 At length, upon the imminent arrival of a posse comitatus who had learned of his attempted scheme to sell the state of Mississippi to a mysterious Chinese consortium based in Tijuana, Mexico, "Dick" Counterfly had absquatulated swiftly into the night, leaving his son with only a pocketful of specie and the tender admonition, "Got to 'scram,' kid—write if you get work."

* * * * * * * * * *

It's time for Thomas Pynchon's Dictionary Corner! Sometimes when you're reading a story, you don't want to take the time to look up words you don't know because you mostly get what the word means in context. But other times, your insane mother who realizes you don't understand everything she's saying in her letters from the asylum advises, "Get thee to a dictionary and be relentless about your visits there." But then you think, "What does she know? She's crazy! And what exactly was her relationship with Zampano?!" But also maybe you think, "I should learn something! Let's break out that dictionary! I mean look in the online dictionary!"

"length" = the opposite of width and it doesn't matter. Width does matter though.

"imminent" = forthcoming. Like your mom. Ha!

"arrival" = to arrive. To be in a state of having just arrived. Or the enemy of an automatic rifle (which I'm often told isn't what AR stands for by people who are easily angered by insisting that it actually does stand for that. They also believe that if I think AR does stand for automatic rifle, I can't have an opinion on children being shot with one).

"posse" = is what happens when you steal some guy's horse and that guy has connections with the sheriff. But if the guy doesn't have connections to the sheriff and the guy who owns the general store and the guy who owns the saloon and the guy who owns the brothel, his horse is just gone, man.

"comitatus" = this is a Latin word that basically means posse. But saying "posse posse" sounds ridiculous. Also there was some big deal act about Posse Comitatus back in 1878 which, and this is straight from Wikipedia because I don't know nearly enough about anything, "limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States." Is this act still law because maybe somebody should throw it in Trump's stupid face?

"learned" = I probably don't need to define all the words, do I? There's probably a baseline level of understanding English that I should take for granted.

"Mississippi" = this is either one of the states of the United States or it's a clever insult: "Miss is a pee pee."

"mysterious Chinese consortium" = this is a clue that Dick's involved in a scam.

"based in Tijuana, Mexico" = this is another clue that Dick's involved in a scam.

"Dick" = an embarrassing and nonsensical nickname for a guy named Richard. One of my cousins named his kid John Thomas and I laugh about it at least once a week.

"absquatulated" = at first I thought this was just a silly word that Pynchon made up. But it's worse than that. It's a silly word that people of the 1830s made up during a fad when it was fun to make up words that sounded vaguely Latin and which Pynchon, of course, knew about. I think it means "to abdicate as a low and vulgar person without any means or power."

"specie" = disappointingly, this simply means coins. I will not tell you what I hoped it meant.

"scram" = a word that means "I never loved you and must now get as far away from you as possible, for as long as possible."

So now we know about Chick's childhood! It was a little bit like Paper Moon except Chick's dad doesn't get his ass kicked so he never realizes how much he loves his kid and how much he's been hurting them.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 7: Line 65

 Chick's father, Richard, commonly known as "Dick," originally from the North, had for several years been active in the Old Confederacy trying his hand at a number of business projects, none of which, regrettably, had proven successful, and not a few of which, in fact, had obliged him, as the phrase went, to approach the gates of the Penitentiary.

* * * * * * * * * *

I mean, right off the start, let's just acknowledge the penis reference in the name Dick. Okay? Now that that's out of the way, let's see what else we've got.

A part of me has always sort of known what a Carpetbagger was and also sort of couldn't rightly explain it but I felt, immediately after reading this, that old Dick Counterfly must have been a Carpetbagger. I think I also read up on it and wiped the sweat from my brow in relief when I discovered I was on the right track and hadn't wasted all that time nearly getting an American Studies minor. I say nearly because I simply didn't want to spend one more semester in college taking one three credit course which would have given me something else to make my dumb father proud of me. What I'm trying to say is I didn't care if my father was proud of me and I was ready to just be done with college.

So here was Chick's father trying to score some easy cash during Reconstruction by either business projects that were probably just legal enough and others that were not legal at all. This is what Pynchon means by "approaching the gates of the Penitentiary" which sent me into a bit of a rabbit hole trying to figure out. It's a hard phrase to read about seeing as how a big section of the Internet has decided that Against the Day is the place to learn about it. Eventually, I found it used in a history book called Mint Juleps with Teddy Roosevelt where the author quotes Quay as saying, regarding people who were possibly paid to vote for Harrison in 1888, how many underlings had been "compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary." So there's Pynchon using an apt phrase for the time in a way that proves he's a time traveler who does his research by going back to the years covered by his book and just living there while writing the book.

In conclusion, the main point is that Chick's father Dick (ha ha!) was a Carpetbagger.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 7: Line 64

 His story, as clearly as could be made out among the abrupt changes of register which typify the adolescent voice, exacerbated by the perilousness of the situation, was as follows.

* * * * * * * * * *

"His story" reads as history therefore this entire sentence should be read as a commentary on history. Don't @ me.

See, what Pynchon is saying is that the United States was still young when the War Between the States happened and so, in documenting it, it might not have been told clearly and thus subsequent attempts to make the United States better were muddled in the miscommunication of what actually happened and therefore we're all still paying for the United States' sins. See, it's hard to tell the truth in a "perilous situation," meaning that the accounts of time were subject to the rebuttals and accusations and remonstrances and, above all, the violent acts of the rebels who tried to divide our nation to maintain the right to keep other people as slaves.

So the history of the adolescent United States could not clearly be made out due to the inefficacy of its adolescent voice and also because it was being constantly threatened by rough vandals and white supremacists.

Go ahead. Just tell me that isn't what's being said here!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 7: Line 63

 Two weeks previous, beside a black-water river of the Deep South, with the Chums attempting to negotiate a bitter and unresolved "piece of business" from the Rebellion of thirty years previous—one still not advisable to set upon one's page—Chick had appeared one night at their encampment in a state of extreme fright, pursued by a band of night-riders in white robes and sinister pointed hoods, whom the boys recognized immediately as the dreaded "Ku Klux Klan."

* * * * * * * * * *

I have often wondered how American conservatives can enjoy any kind of storytelling entertainment (books, movie, comics, television, music . . . you know, all of it, really) when the protagonists of those stories are often fighting against everything the American conservative believes in. At least, I had often wondered this until recently when I realized right wing talk radio and right wing television news programs became a thing to fill the entertainment vacuum for American conservatives. No wonder they watch and listen to the propaganda spewing assholes all day long because other forms of entertainment constantly remind them that they are the villain to be fought against. Of course you'd want to watch something that told you that your values were those of the hero and that the other people were terrible socialist monsters who wanted to destroy you and your family and, most especially of all, your precious guns.

For those who still wanted to be entertained, you would have to come up with a different tactic than simply immersing yourself in right wing propaganda and that would be attacking media entertainment outlets for getting too political in their stories. You would then argue that stories used to be non-political and simply entertaining after which you would not point to any past examples because those don't exist. All stories are political when the politics you've chosen are selfish, cruel, and without any sacrifice for the greater good. All stories appear political when you constantly see yourself as the villain. Instead of engaging in self-reflection and thinking, "Am I the baddie?" [Thank you, Mitchell and Webb], they simply condemn the thing that made them feel bad. And then they paint that as some new form of political correctness gone mad instead of realizing that the little guy fighting back against injustice has always been the core of most stories. They just didn't see it that way until they embraced the injustice. All of a sudden, every story was an attack on them.

The only protagonist an American conservative can identify with is Ebenezer Scrooge and he's tormented until he gives up his American conservative values! The greatest and most uplifting look at Earth's future is Star Trek: The Next Generation and it's a socialist utopia where they don't even have money! I don't know what they're always gambling for when playing poker but I assume every chip can be redeemed for oral sex. How do they see inclusivity and universal health care and the elimination of poverty and helping anybody who needs help as terrible acts that will destroy our country? Oh, I think that question answers itself. Those things will destroy what they think of as their country. They might support the same thing American progressives support but they only support those things for certain people. Some people are deserving of life; some people are not.

And that's sort of what sent me on this tangent: the introduction of the Ku Klux Klan in this line by describing them as "dreadful." They're bad guys and Pynchon doesn't need to waste any space showing the reader why they're bad. We just know it. Here are some people described as chasing a boy through the night in sinister hoods and when it's revealed that it's the dreaded Ku Klux Klan, the reader just thinks, "Yeah. Of course it is. Jerks." That line is a lot like the movie Get Out. It's revealing in how the audience reacts to it. The story isn't telling you what to think or feel; the way you wind up thinking and feeling tells you how true the story is. Who reads this line and thinks "Hey wait a second now! The Ku Klux Klan had some good programs and ideas!"? A terrible person, that's who. And who can watch the final scene of Get Out and not feel the tension and despair and fear when the cop car pulls up, a scene that has been played over and over in white horror movies as a way to release tension and to say, "Everything is safe now. The horror is all over"? A person who is defending terrible ideologies and denying reality is who.

Now that that's out of the way . . . what is this unresolved "piece of business" that the Narrator feels is still, thirty years on, inadvisable to make a Chums of Chance book out of?! What are they up to?! This reeks of conspiracy! And a conspiracy that must revolve around slavery! I demand a Chums of Chance book about this post-forthwith even if the other Chums of Chance books don't actually exist! This book could blow the doors off the General Lee! And you know how hard that would be seeing as how they were welded shut!

This line also humanizes Chick a bit more. Rather than seeing the aloof, rebellious loner who doesn't quite fit in, we see a young boy scared for his life seeking help from others. The very antithesis of who we, the readers, thought he was! I love Chick so much more now (and I loved him—or her, maybe—a lot already).

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 7: Line 62

 Even allowing for his irregular history—a mother, so it was said, vanished when he was yet a babe—a father, disreputably adrift somewhere in the Old Confederacy—Counterfly's propensity for gratuitous insult had begun to pose a threat to his probationary status with the Chums of Chance, if not, indeed, to group morale.

* * * * * * * * * *

It seems to me, Lindsay's concern for Chick Counterfly has nothing to do with Chick Counterfly. That's why he "frowned in perplexity." Because he doesn't know how to berate Chick into falling in line without looking like a jerk, seeing as how Chick Counterfly's family situation makes him a sympathetic character to the other members of the crew. We already saw how Miles Blundell bit his tongue when Chick insulted him out of respect for Chick's pathetic upbringing in a vulgar and low social environment. But Lindsay has "group morale" to think about. Because if "group morale" falls, things aboard their tiny airship might get dangerous. And dangerous working conditions can lead to a truly terrible conclusion: loss of profits!

Okay, sure, maybe Lindsay cares about the crew and he's truly thinking about the crew's safety is an argument somebody might make who forgot they read that part where Lindsay dangles Darby dangerously over the side of the airship as punishment.

Lindsay sucks.

We get a little bit of Chick's history from this line which sets up some future drama if Pynchon decides he needs more drama later. Who was Chick's mother? Where did she go? Why did she abandon him?! Why is his father disreputable? What's he doing in the Old Confederacy? Might he come looking for his son someday, purporting to have missed him all these long years but, in reality, attempting some huge con to get his son's money? That's a plot which always comes up with estranged fathers in sitcoms, right? Usually in a poignant episode that downplays the laughs and which ends with everybody hugging after they stand up to the charlatan father.

We also learn Chick has probationary status with the Chums of Chance. Earlier we learned he was the newest member (as even the Narrator is unsure how he might act in various situations) and now we learn that he's not yet a full member. But even Lindsay won't boot him out of the organization. Mostly for Lindsay's own sake, of course, in that Lindsay doesn't want to come off as an unfeeling jerk in the crew's eyes. Although what are the crews' feelings for Darby if Lindsay can swing him around over the side of the airship without Lindsay worrying about what people might think of him? Darby must be just annoying enough to everybody on the ship that they don't mind him getting comeuppance every now and again.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 7: Line 61

 Hearing this, Lindsay Noseworth frowned in perplexity.

* * * * * * * * * *

The "this" which Lindsay heard was Chick Counterfly insulting Darby Suckling's work ethic. That upset Lindsay. Remember, Lindsay is the guy who just held Darby over the side of the Inconvenience for doing nothing, really. He threatened a member of the crew's life because that crew member "spoke informally." But now Lindsay acts sad and confused that Chick Counterfly has called Darby a saphead for risking his life for The Man. Lindsay is telling on himself.

For Lindsay, it's okay for a person in charge to threaten the life of the workers for any thing that he thinks might interfere with the work. One of those things that might interfere with the work is one of the workers telling another worker that they're an idiot for accepting the mortal dangers of work that has little meaning in the overall scheme of things. To possibly trade your life for a mere wind reading when, from the deck of the gondola, you can get a pretty good idea of what the wind's doing is a sucker's game. But voicing that reality is not something a foreman or manager or owner or Second-in-Command can allow. Because it goes against the work. And to the person in charge, the work, or the bottom line, is more important than the worker.

Chick Counterfly has just brought the stink of unionizing onto the Inconvenience with a casual insult.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 7: Line 60

 Though the extreme hazard was obvious to all, Darby's enthusiasm for the task at hand created, as ever, a magical cloak about his elfin form that seemed to protect him, though not from the sarcasm of Chick Counterfly, who now called after the ascending mascotte, "Hey! Suckling! Only a saphead would risk his life to see how fast the wind's blowing!"

* * * * * * * * * *

"A magical cloak"? "His elfin form"? What am I reading? Tolkien?!

Actually, I would be reading Tolkien right now but I couldn't find my copy of The Lord of the Rings. But just like the dumb hobbits and lousy elves in that series, Darby Suckling very much has a magical cloak that protects him while climbing around on the outside of the balloon; it's called plot armor. He has to live so that he can grow into a surly teenager and punch Lindsay in his smart (so smart it's practically Vulcanic!) mouth. Unless that never happens and now I'm worried Darby might fall to his death in this scene!

Chick is totally right about sapheads in this sentence (and it is "a sentence" even though Chick's quotation contains three sentences of its own! Language! Go figure, right?!). Some people can be fooled into risking their lives for the most mundane reasons and those people are rightly called sapheads. My guess is the derogatory term derives from the term sappers and the menial, often dangerous work they did.

I first learned what a sapper is from playing the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game. I probably learned most of the stuff I first learned by playing roleplaying games. I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons when I was ten or eleven and was soon also playing Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, and Top Secret. Probably more games than that because my friends and I played whatever we could get our hands on, even making up a game that encompassed ideas from all the games we were playing which we called Now & Later.

For some reason, this scene reminds me of an old video from the 80s or early 90s when "caught on tape" video shows were all the rage. It was footage taken by an Australian teacher out on a hike with students. He warned a couple of them not to go out on this thin pass over a chasm and was filming them as they were not heeding his cries. Suddenly the path gave out beneath them and they began tumbling down into the ravine while he followed their progress with his camera and shouting, "I told you not to go out there!"

Man. Remembering that video always makes me laugh! It also makes me envious that I'll never get an "I told you so!" in quite as quickly or as ill-timed as that bastard!

Apparently there was a silent comedy from the 1920s called The Saphead. The synopsis is "The scatterbrained son of a Wall Street tycoon goes to the stock exchange and saves his father from bankruptcy." He's probably called a saphead because he helps some dumb rich guy stay rich. Boo! Hiss! We hates him!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 7: Lines 58-59

 (For readers here making their first acquaintance with our band of young adventurers, it must be emphasized at once that—perhaps excepting the as yet insufficiently known Chick Counterfly—none would e'er have entered the morally poisonous atmosphere of the "frontón," as such haunts are called down there, had it not been essential to the intelligence-gathering activities the Chums had contracted to render at that time to the Interior Ministry of President Porfirio Díaz. For details of their exploits, see The Chums of Chance in Old Mexico.)

* * * * * * * * * *

This parenthetical reference answers some of my questions about the previous sentence. Some people might be thinking, "Yeah. That's how books work. Maybe give the author a little time to explain themselves!" But other people might be thinking, "Shut up, jerk!"

Actually, I don't mind taking the time after each sentence to consider what's being said or, more aptly, what's not being said. It helps a person get a handle on the story in their own way. What if I read one sentence, considered it, and came to a stunning conclusion which is confirmed in the next sentence? That's something most readers wouldn't experience if they didn't stop to let things percolate. They just might go on living their lives thinking the author exposed the twist in Sentence B when the author had actually exposed the twist in Sentence A!

It's too bad I didn't go on a tangent in the previous entry about the kids participating in gambling like I almost did because this parenthetical reference would have seemed to be speaking directly to me. My favorite bit of the disclaimer about how the Chums would never participate in this mean activity is the Narrator saying, "Except maybe Chick! We don't know enough about him yet, being he's new to the group!" You know what the Narrator really wanted to say but is too couth to say it is, "Counterfly would have lost the Chums of Chance's per diem for the entire trip on football bets and prostitutas, no doubt about it!"

The Chums of Chance were contracted to work for the Mexican government in this story. So they seem to be a mercenary organization. Or freelancers, if the term "mercenary" seems a bit too rough. That could still mean their organization is tied up with the U.S. government though.

This sentence also gives us the name of the book which may have been evocative to the youth of the 19th Century but just sounds boring after my supposed title of The Chums of Chance are Bested by Football Hooligans. Some 19th Century kid was probably all, "Oh boy! Gee squillikers! Old Mexico! By gum, that does sound exciting, doesn't it, Mother?! Could we possible not eat for four days so that I may indulge in a right jolly good adventure fantasy!"

You know what I just got an idea for? A role-playing game based on Horatio Alger novels!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 7: Line 57

 It will be recalled that this method of passing information had been adopted by the crew during their brief though inconclusive sojourn "south of the border," where they had observed it among the low elements who dissipate their lives in placing wagers on the outcomes of pelota games.

* * * * * * * * * *

It will not be recalled because nobody read any of these fictional Chums of Chance novels, you jerk! What was this novel called? The Chums of Chance are Bested by Football Hooligans?

The Chums of Chance work for an organization that probably isn't the United States of America or else wouldn't they constantly be causing international incidents with their adventures in other countries like Mexico or Indonesia or Atlantis? On the other hand, they do seem pretty patriotic if I had to judge by their celebratory bunting. But that also just might be camouflage for the Chicago World's Fair!

The phrase "dissipate their lives" feels particular insulting to me. Thanks, Pynchon!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Pages 6-7: Line 56

 Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible, took their stations at the control-panels of the apparatus, as Darby Suckling, meantime, went scrambling up the ratlines and shrouds of the giant ellipsoidal envelope from which the gondola depended, to the very top, where the aery flux was uninterrupted, in order to read, from an anemometer of the Robinson's type, accurate wind measurements, as an index of how rapidly the ship was proceeding, conveying these down to the bridge by means of a written note inside a tennis-ball lowered on a length of line.

* * * * * * * * * *

Here we go again with the "Miles is a fat klutz" shit! I know Pynchon hasn't given us an actual physical description of Miles but I would wager that 98% of all casting agents would only put a call out for overweight kids for this part. It's a trope for a reason and that reason is the same reason it was, for many years (and still today maybe?), to have every fat person in a film or television show shown holding food whenever they were on camera! Unless the reason is unimaginative script writers, directors, and casting agents?

If I were on dating apps, I would simply lift the description of Chick and use it to describe myself. "A want of alacrity fully as perceptible." Okay, maybe I'd have to change the wording a bit by taking out the "as"! But you get my point if you know the meaning of "alacrity" and "perceptible" and "want" used to mean "lacking" (which is what I guess it always means although it connotes a slightly different feeling when used as a verb, as if your desire for the thing you lack is the foregrounded idea).

What Pynchon does at the beginning of this sentence is to just cement the two-dimensional, cartoon nature of these two characters (which cements the idea that the whole Chums of Chance crew is a 70s cartoon (or, you know, Victorian era kid adventure dime novel). Miles is the blundering (Blundell!) fatty and Chick is the slackluster rebel (COUNTERfly!) without a fuck. So that's the subject of the first sentence of this sentence taken care of!

The other half of the sentence (the object, I guess? Because that half is about the object the subject is verbing? (Hee hee. So dirty!)) helps flesh out the description of the Inconvenience from the previous sentence. I thought maybe there was a ladder but now we see Darby is just climbing up the ropes surrounding the balloon (ellipsoidal!) to which the gondola is attached and that the anemometer is located directly on top of the balloon so as to get a perfectly clear and unobstructed reading of the direction and strength of the wind. So Darby's really risking his tail here!

The Robinson Anemometer (which is what the text under the anemometer says but you probably couldn't read it)

Darby sends the data back to Randolph by writing a note while clinging to the top of the balloon buffeted by the winds and then stuffing that note (if it hasn't blown away) into a cut open tennis ball (who hasn't cut open a tennis ball and then used it for all sorts of strange purposes one of which was almost certainly some weird new space vehicle for their Star Wars Jawa action figure) and lowering it down on a line. I know I just repeated a bunch of what Pynchon said but I wanted to highlight how difficult it probably was for poor Darby!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 6: Line 55

 As their orders had directed them to proceed to Chicago without delay, Randolph, after studying an aeronautical chart of the country below them, called out, "Now, Suckling—aloft with the anemometer—Blundell and Counterfly, stand by the Screw," referring to an aerial-propulsion device, which the more scientific among my young readers may recall from the boys' earlier adventures (The Chums of Chance at Krakatoa, The Chums of Chance Search for Atlantis), for augmenting the cruising speed of the Inconvenience—invented by their longtime friend Professor Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven, and powered by an ingenious turbine engine whose boiler was heated by burning surplus hydrogen gas taken from the envelope through special valve arrangements—though the invention had been predictably disparaged by Dr. Vanderjuice's many rivals as no better than a perpetual-motion machine, in clear violation of thermodynamical law.

* * * * * * * * * *

Why have the Chums of Chance been tasked with heading to the Chicago World's Fair? I don't know! Why did I suddenly turn into my Aunt Mel asking questions of the other first-time viewers of a movie that hasn't gotten to the answers yet?!

This sentence gives us a bit of a look at the Inconvenience. I don't know what the balloon looks like exactly but there's some space up there where the anemometer hangs and probably a small rope ladder hanging down, which I suspect only the diminutive Darby Suckling can climb to read the meter. Then it's got a screw-like propulsion system to help move the balloon in the direction it needs to go when the wind has turned against them. The huge Screw works like a jet engine if a jet engine were a huge screw instead of a huge fan which, I mean, it is since a fan is just a screw as drawn by M.C. Escher. But I don't want to get bogged down by the hard science of it all especially since the really hard science has been provided by Professor Heino Vanderjuice.

The hard science comes from the turbine engine which powers the Screw. Or maybe it's flaccid science because it apparently is just a figment of Dr. Heino Vanderjuice's imagination! Except that it's right there on the ship doing the impossible thing it's supposed to do! The machine is fueled by the same hydrogen that gives the ship lift so the Chums don't need to carry excess hydrogen. But if the machine is consuming the hydrogen in the balloon's envelope, won't it eventually begin to deflate and descend?! I guess that's why it only consumes the "excess" hydrogen. But then where does that come from? That just sounds like the Chums have, actually, brought more hydrogen than they need to fuel the turbine! I guess that's where the whole perpetual-motion machine comes into play; we just have to accept that there's always enough hydrogen to both lift the ship and power the turbine and never too much hydrogen that needs to be stored, adding excess weight to the ship.

I know what you're thinking! "How does hydrogen add weight to an airship?! It makes it float, stupid-head!" Pshaw! Perhaps in your stupid-headedness you forgot about a little something called "helium tanks"? Duh! Those are heavy!

Is Pynchon taking a dig at scientists here? That they can't believe in something that actually exists if their mathematical equations and tested theories tell them it can't exist? That they're too wrapped up in their heads to congratulate Dr. Vanderjuice for creating something impossible? What a bunch of jerks! Man, scientists are whack is something kids said in the 80s.

What's that? His name? What's odd about the name Heino Vanderjuice? You must not have suspended your belief enough to deal with a Pynchon world where characters have the dumbest names possible! That's a compliment! I love his names!

Could "Vanderjuice" be read as "Wander Jews" which I probably don't need to explain to my super smart readers. They know the history of the Jewish peoples and what pogroms are and also who Moses was and basically the entire description of the Jewish life until May 14, 1948! Unless my readers aren't super smart and they're more like me, a guy who just watched Fiddler on the Roof every single time he stumbled upon it on local television programming as a young child. One time we watched it in elementary school but it's so long that the teacher split it up over two days. I decided to stay home one day, forgetting we were watching Fiddler on the Roof, and missed half of it. That'll probably be the biggest regret rolling around in my head on the day I die, how I wasted a stay at home day on a day we watched Fiddler on the Roof!

Maybe Vanderjuice can be read as "Wonder Juice." So it's like a Philosopher's Stone sort of thing, a magical elixir. Vanderjuice can create impossible things through the magic of science and/or alchemy (choose the conjunction that most describes your feelings on the relationship between science and alchemy).

And what about Heino?! I don't even know how to pronounce it. Like "High? No!" or "Hey! NO!" or "He Eno"? Maybe it's just supposed to make you think about ketchup for the sake of thinking about ketchup. That seems like a solid artistic statement.

We also learn from this narrator (who is this narrator?!) about two more Chums of Chance books. In these two adventures, we get another example of how the surface of the Earth is the mid-point of the Chums' world. Atlantis is deep beneath the ocean; Krakatoa, being a huge volcano, is high above the Earth. Being "down to Earth" takes on a new meaning with these kids. Or the same meaning, really! Just more literal. When they're on Earth, they're more in reality. When they're above or below it, they're in a kind of fantasy realm where possibly anything goes.

* * * * * * * * * *

Postscript: Heino is a shortened version of the name Heinrich which means "Ruler of the household." This is a fitting name for the leader of the Chums of Chance. But it is also coupled with the name "Vanderjuice" which could possibly be read as "Wander Jew" or "The Wandering Jew." Which means the name is contradictory. A man with no home who is also the ruler of the house.