"Mr. Noseworth," Lindsay corrected him.
* * * * * * * * * *
Come on, Lindsay. You're all just a bunch of kids! There ain't no misters aboard this ship. I guess my feelings for Lindsay are going to constantly vacillate from hate to love to hate and then more hate plus a little more hate maybe then less hate but still hate and then a little bit of liking him for how much of a jerk he is right back to completely despising him. It's going to be a tumultuous affair!
"Like me to break out some of them parachute rigs, Noseworth?" drawled Chick.
* * * * * * * * * *
Chick isn't actually from the South but I guess he spent enough time there to develop a drawl. I suppose, technically, you can drawl even if you're from other regions of the world but I wouldn't recommend it.
The parachute was invented nearly a hundred years previous to this story so I did one of those "Aw shucks!" movements with my arms in my disappointment in not catching Pynchon committing an anachronistic error. I know, I know! As if he'd mess up with something so obvious! But that's where you're going to have to catch him! With the big things that nobody would bother to research! He'll be all, "Dragons went extinct in 1632" and you'll think, "Yeah, okay, sounds legit." But then if you do the research, you'll be all, "Wait a minute! Dragons NEVER existed!"
That was just a hypothetical piece of fan fiction in which I catch Thomas Pynchon making an error. Here's a piece of historical fiction that you'll enjoy:
The man who didn't invent the parachute but may as well claim to have, André-Jacques Garnerin, died in a balloon accident when he was preparing to test a new parachute. If only he'd had a . . . wait a second! I think I need more details about this accident. I bet it was something like, "Garnerin got into an argument with his wife as they began to ascend and she shot him in the face with her cleavage pistol before they got high enough for him to test his parachute."
Darby, his uniform fluttering in the outrush of gas, gallantly hastened to comply.
* * * * * * * * * *
If this were Shakespeare, I'd say this is probably a fart joke. But it's Pynchon, so it's definitely a fart joke.
"Return the valve manually," he shouted up at Darby, "to its closed position," adding, "you little fool," in a barely audible tone.
* * * * * * * * * *
By returning the valve manually, we see that mankind still has ultimate control of the machines he surrounds himself with. Mankind is still in the saddle, if I can be so bold as to distort a poetic reference from a poem I hardly understand and have probably twisted to my own means. Sorry, Waldo.
Speaking of little fools, I once met a guy at a party (the Millennium New Year's Eve party, I believe (the generally accepted one and not the historically accurate one)) who proclaimed he was a Taoist. He said he became Taoist when one of his friends declared he was the most Taoist person he'd ever met. So then he looked into Taoism and strove to become more Taoist. Which, I mean, just seemed like the least Taoist thing ever. I explained to him that I, on the other hand, was absolutely distraught when I learned what Taoism was while studying John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat because it seemed that that was what I was but by putting a name to it, I suddenly wasn't that at all. When it was just a way I lived my life, it was more the thing than knowing that I was living my life according to some set of beliefs (no matter how sort of lazy and arbitrary they might be, being, you know, Taoist). I decided to just ignore that I ever heard of the stupid philosophy and went back to my life.
I'm not saying I was a better Taoist than this guy who wanted to be the best Taoist but, I mean, come on. I'm sure it wasn't very Taoist of me to gain pleasure from telling this guy that his desire to be Taoist wasn't very Taoist but then, like I said, I didn't become Taoist when I discovered what it was. So what was holding me back from gaining pleasure in this sudden and unexpected moment where pleasure was to be derived?! Fuck that needing to be something unique and special shit! Especially fuck that Taoist shit for trying to make me more Taoist by rejecting Taoism! Stop it, Taoism! Leave me alone! Jerk.
As tears of frustration began to gather in Randolph's eyes, Lindsay, sensing in his chief a familiar inertia, his speech only temporarily muffled by Miles's elbow, rushed, or more accurately crawled, into the vacuum of authority.
* * * * * * * * * *
And just like that, 137 lines into the book, I kind of love Lindsay. This moment makes Lindsay a better person than me. He sees his captain overwhelmed by frustration and emotion and moves to take Randolph's burden. I wish I had whatever strength it takes to be like that instead of wrapped up in my own selfishness and paranoid projections of possible manipulation. Lindsay is not only being a good second-in-command here; he's being a good friend as well.
"Familiar inertia" suggests Randolph has previously fallen into this state of paralytic frustration in the past, abandoning his post and responsibility, through no purposeful fault of his own, of course, but due to a minor defect in character, or, possibly, the opposite, a strength of love and emotion for his crew and ship so strong that it can leave him helpless in the face of the impending destruction of either. But loyal and perceptive Lindsay is there to take the reins and bear Randolph's cross.
That's not the appropriate analogy for this, is it? It's just that I used burden earlier so I didn't want to say "shoulder his burden of leadership" even though that's way more appropriate since Randolph has no reason to be bearing a cross here. Unless he sees leadership as a punishment for his sin of caring too much?
Also note the use of the terms "inertia" and "vacuum." Pynchon doesn't want you forgetting that this book is, at its core (maybe? Who knows?! I don't!), about physics.
If you've read this book before and it isn't about physics, no need to tell me. I'll discover that soon enough!
On a side note, I wonder what Pugnax has been up to while the ship has been crashing? Dumb dog!
