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

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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 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.

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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!"

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 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.

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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.

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