Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 12: Line 31 (136)

 "What is it that I am to do up here, Professor?" called the ingenuous mascotte.

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"Ingenuous" means "innocent and unsuspecting." That Darby's a good kid, if a little naïve. Randolph says, "Darby! Climb the outside of that balloon in these torrential winds!" and Darby says, "Right away, Professor!" Even if Darby has no clue what he's doing. How is he supposed to keep the airship from crashing by climbing up onto the envelope? Isn't Chick going to save the day by dropping fat sandbags? Maybe it's a two-part plan! Three parts if you count Lindsay's figure-four hold on Miles to keep him from knocking The Screw loose and cutting free the envelope in a wild series of pie eating accidents.

In a strange way, I now really want to blog every book I read exactly like this! Imagine doing Alan Moore's Jerusalem! Oh! I think I will do that! But just for the Lucia Joyce chapter! Do I need a new blog for that or should I just add it to Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea?!

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 12: Line 30 (135)

 Looking up, he observed Darby Suckling gazing down at him, inquisitively.

* * * * * * * * * *

Randolph finds himself below and looking up at Darby, as if he were a savior descended from heaven to save him. Although he probably isn't. For one, his name is "Suckling." That's a tiny runt of a pig, right? Cute and useless unless some spider plays up his vague yet inimitable qualities. Also he's confused. So what can he do to save the airship unless Randolph commands him.

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 12: Line 29 (134)

 The ready little fellow scurried up the lines, as Randolph, preoccupied with the crisis and staggering across the deck, somehow tripped over Lindsay Noseworth attempting to extricate himself from beneath the squirming mass of Miles Blundell, and abruptly joined his horizontal shipmates.

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There's a time in everybody's life when they have that "A-ha!" moment about Shakespeare, when a professor points out that Shakespeare isn't just fancy words and teenage suicide but also full of bawdy jokes and vulgar humor. Of course, the professor has to point it all out explicitly because who can understand that shit? Well, that same thing happened for me with Thomas Pynchon. Except that nobody ever told me how funny he was (even I didn't tell myself after reading The Crying of Lot 49. Although I did think Mason & Dixon was funny but I wasn't sure I was supposed to be finding it funny. Clever, sure. But, I mean, is it funny when underage girls sit on the lap of an 18th century gentleman to tease him with their fannies because they enjoy seeing him walk around with a boner? That's funny, right? Or gross? I can't tell anymore); I had to figure it out myself by reading Gravity's Rainbow. But now that I know he can be silly and low brow and enjoys hiding phallic symbols in his imagery, I wasn't confused at all by this prolonged slapstick bit.

Not that it's really prolonged! I explained that in an earlier blog post! But it feels long when every sentence works at making the entanglements of the slapstick scene more chaotic. This is just more of that! Now Randolph has fallen on his ass in a pile of Lindsay arms and Miles chub ruffles (I'm using their names as descriptions of the body parts and not as the possessors of the body parts so stop frowning and squinting your eyes and judging me for a typo and/or grammar error that doesn't exist). If you picture it, you'll probably laugh pretty hard! Not out loud, of course. Nobody really laughs out loud while reading, do they? I mean except for that candy eating scene in Gravity's Rainbow. I made sure everybody seated around me at the coffee shop while I was reading it heard me chuckle appreciatively at the humor, ending every chuckle with a softly spoken (but loud enough to make sure everybody heard), "Oh, that Pynchon! Ha!"

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 12: Line 28 (133)

 "Suckling! aloft, and quickly!"

* * * * * * * * * *

"Suckling! aloft, and quickly! Ho!" Randolph
Commands his crew. Insistent now, his fear,
It creeps. The rest of them, they whinge and scoff,
Their trust—that youth will keep them safe—so clear.
So youth is wasted on the young. Let youths
Deny and disregard mortality.
Why burden them with thoughts of death whose truths
Can haunt, stalling risky ability?
Their ends, often, so close at hand but they
Do not notice at all. Like water drip-
ping off the duck, it bothers not their play.
Carefree and slow, they right the lilting ship.
They live through Hell and we think, "What the fuck?"
Young lives saved through dexterity and luck.

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 12: Line 27 (132)

 The valve now remained ajar—the very mouth of Hell!

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Oh! Maybe the Crack of Doom was also a reference to The Lord of the Rings! Because that Crack of Doom was also a very mouth of Hell! A very, very mouth of Hell even! But how does that reference even work thematically?! I'm open to it being a true reference and not just a big dumb joke. But I think I need to know more about the themes and plot of the book to figure it out. Maybe it's just to remind the reader of Gollum and how much Gollum loves riddles which then makes the reader think of this riddle:

When is a valve not a valve? When it's ajar! Ah ha ha ha ha!

Yeah. That's an analytical reading that would totally fly in academia.

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 12: Line 26 (131)

 With a loud twang that may as well have been the Crack of Doom, the line around his foot was yanked free of its attachment to the Main Valve, though not before pulling beyond its elastic limit the spring meant to restore it to a safely-closed position.

* * * * * * * * * *

The "Crack of Doom" is an obvious reference to Tolkien who was born just a year previous in 1892. Okay, maybe not. But it could be, seeing that it's capitalized, a reference to William Minto's 1886 science fiction novel. No wait! It definitely definitely is a reference to Robert Cromie's 1885 science fiction novel, The Crack of Doom which "explores the dangers of unfettered scientific experimentation" (quote from the Google Book description). The book is set in the year 2000 and is best known for being the first science fiction work to contemplate the end of the world through nuclear Armageddon. The antagonist is also super evil because he's a feminist. So maybe Robert Cromie was also the first incel? The synopsis of the story I read also states that along with feminism, the antagonist is motivated by "other unacceptable beliefs." I wonder if any of them are labor union oriented?

Aside from tying this book into the post-modern world of nuclear annihilation through the casual connective tissue of referencing a 19th Century science fiction novel to describe the snapping of a rope, the part about the spring being pulled beyond its elastic limit and thus not being able to restore itself to its normative and acceptable and safe settings should probably be focused on for thematic reasons. I don't know what those thematic reasons are, exactly, because I haven't read the book. But I'm sure they're a reference to regular, common folk being driven well past their breaking point, so much so that they never truly right themselves again. Like Frost's "Birches" after some boy has been swinging them! Or were the ones that never truly righted themselves the ones bowed down by snow and nature? You know what? It doesn't matter because I got to reference "Birches" (a poem I once parodied as "Bitches" (Oh, you want to read that now, do you? Well, you'll have to ask for it).

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 12: Line 25 (130)

 Chick shrugged and released his grip on Miles, proceeding lackadaisically to the nearest gunwale to unlash the ballast bags there, leaving Lindsay, with no time to adjust to the increased burden, to crash to the deck with a panicked cry, and the now all but hysterical Miles Blundell on top of him.

* * * * * * * * * *

If I weren't reading this book one line at a time, this slapstick scene would have been over in a matter of seconds. I don't think you're supposed to spend a full week on a slapstick section of text. It certainly leaves me with not much to say the further I get into it. This is because the chaos of slapstick, while something that visually happens quite fast, needs more space and time to describe the intricacies of it in writing. Watching a short clip of somebody slipping on a banana peel is over quickly and immediately satisfying, because the entire thing is experienced at one moment. The movement of the body and the look on the person's face as the foot loses friction and maybe a bystander's reaction nearby combined with the solid sound of the rump hitting floor, the exhalation of breath at impact . . . it all happens in parallel and in just a few seconds. But to describe such a moment in writing would take a paragraph or more. And, in essence, it deflates (as the balloon in the current scene) the whole point of a slapstick moment. But that doesn't stop a writer like Thomas Pynchon!

Part of what helps Pynchon's elongated slapstick scene is the characters' lack of concern with the impending disaster. The writing lengthens the scene and the characters' apathy toward their plummeting airship slows the scene to fit the writing length. Miles getting tangled and causing the ship to begin to plummet while Lindsay rushes to untangle him and Randolph begins shouting panicky orders at his crew should all take place in a dozen seconds or so. But Chick's "lackadaisical" attitude decompresses time. This effect is further achieved with Darby's aside about Lindsay's sudden affliction of potty mouth.

In a way, we have characters moving at vastly different speeds. Chick and Darby are nonchalant and unaffected by the impending crash while Lindsay and Randolph are hyperaware of the critical situation they've found themselves. Miles is a bit in the middle, not too concerned and basically become a puppet to the likes of Lindsay and Chick trying to untangle him. He's just more of the machinery of the ship at this point.

Also, we get another reminder that Miles is fat when Lindsay fails to have time to adjust to "the increased burden." 

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 12: Lines 23-24 (128-129)

 "Counterfly, the ballast man! leave that spastical oaf be, and jettison our sandbags, or we are done for!"

* * * * * * * * * *

I think this is Randolph calling Miles fat again by the literary device of juxtaposition. By invoking the term "ballast," we assume he's talking about the sandbags. But what if he's talking about the other heavy thing in the line, the spastical oaf? Obviously he isn't but that's the job of juxtaposition! To make you think, if even for a fleeting moment, "Oh yeah. That Miles is a fat little oaf, isn't he?"

Not that I'd think that! I would never judge somebody by how much they resemble a sand bag!

Also, calling Miles "spastical" reminds me that perhaps Miles actually has a condition that has yet to be mentioned, perhaps of an epileptic nature.