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They were bound this day for the city of Chicago, and the World's Columbian Exposition recently opened there.

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Not every line can be filled with subtext!

No wait! Maybe I should state that a different way!

Not every line's subtext will be understood by me!

I'm sure you've figured that out by now but I thought maybe I should be transparent about it, just in case. I haven't even read this book all the way through once. I'd have to be pretty freaking sharp to understand it all on the first read through!

Sometimes (maybe most of the time?) the simple right there in front of you typed on the page text should be enough. And this text is saying, "They're going to Chicago and it's 1893 and the Chums of Chance are bound to run into Jimmy Corrigan's grandfather, right? Better him than H. H. Holmes!"

At some point, I'm probably going to have to stop quoting every line from the book for copyright reasons, right? I'm probably still within fair use territory now! And maybe I can do the entire novel like this because who in their right mind would argue that somebody decided to read the entirety of Against the Day for free using my blog, reading one sentence at a time while trying to ignore all of my insane ramblings wedged between?! That would also have to assume that I'm going to get to the end of the novel in this manner! More likely, I'll give up about two hundred lines in and whoever was reading my blog to primarily read Against the Day will find themselves having to go out and buy the book.

Basically, if I do get sued and have to go to court over this, I can argue that I'm a huge quitter and was never going to comment on the entire book, sentence by sentence, anyway! Let's see them try to win a court case based on my ability to finish things! Ha ha! Losers!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 8

When the ship reached cruising altitude, those features left behind on the ground having now dwindled to all but microscopic size, Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander, announced, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," and the boys, each dressed neatly in the summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue, spiritedly complied.

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There was a time when I would dissect a character's name until there was nothing left but useless, bloody, unrecognizable parts. But that was before I began reading Thomas Pynchon novels (okay, fine. I still did it after reading The Crying of Lot 49 and Mason & Dixon but I definitely stopped a few months ago after reading Gravity's Rainbow). Pynchon comes up with some crazy names, right?! Not that I think he doesn't put any thought into those names; I just began to see the benefit of letting the names live and breathe instead of chopping them into mince meat. Take the name Randolph St. Cosmo! Maybe it's a puzzle to be solved but even if I'm incapable of solving that puzzle (or any puzzle, really. Games magazine won't be advertising that I subscribed to their magazine for years as teenager), it still tells a story. It's grandiose! It's majestic! It's the kind of name the leader of a celebrated kids' club would have! A kid with a name like that would be the kid I'd want to make friends with at lunch! After the other kids were done beating him up and taking his lunch money, of course. I wouldn't want to get caught up in the back blast of his "I'm a total nerd" aura. "Don't stand out" was my total personality in elementary school!

Once in the sky, everything on the ground has shrunk to microscopic size. That either means it's beyond notice now and everything important is happening on the ship. Or it could mean that the best way to scrutinize and examine the every day life of every day people is from on high. Sometimes you get conflicting messages from the subtext! It might be helpful if I knew what the "Special Sky Detail" was but it remains a mystery at this time.

What could the Special Sky Detail mean?! Is it a banner? Or an experiment? Is it a task that they all trained to undergo while in the sky? Probably so they don't crash! It's possible it's just some standard ship lingo that doesn't mean anything even though every word is capitalized and it begins with "Special."

If you didn't get the message that these boys were a patriotic lot from the previous sentence that described the bunting as patriotic (I mean, did you immediately fall asleep after you began reading this book? We're not even ten sentences in yet!), you might notice the Chums of Chance summer uniforms here and think, "Hey! Those are the same colors as the Norwegian flag!" If you did think that, you're both smarter and dumber than I am!

I imagine they all look like Stripesy from DC Comics except with short pants (being that it's the summer uniform!).