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 "But," too much smoke in the air, not much time before he'd have to excuse himself, "I'm not sure how I can help."

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"You can help by taking this gun cane, calling a meeting with Tesla, and, well, you're good at math, right?" is what I would have had Scarsdale Vibe answer.

"too much smoke in the air, not much time before he'd have to excuse himself"
Only the most terrible and evil people can inhale so much smoke in one sitting. I don't have scientific proof of this but if I did, you couldn't trust my results because I don't believe in evil anyway. It's just bad things being done by selfish people who don't give a shit about anything but their own needs and desires. If you want to call that evil, well, sure. Whatever. I just use the word "evil" because it's easier than discussing the philosophy of good and evil every time the word is used. Just like when a scientist refers to God in a metaphorical way. Nobody wants to have to have a side discussion about the actual existence of nonsense. We all just understand that they didn't really mean it. I also read Elfquest and didn't have to stop every few pages to reassure myself that elves weren't real.

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 "If such a thing is ever produced, Scarsdale Vibe was saying, "it will mean the end of the world, not just 'as we know it' but as anyone knows it. It is a weapon, Professor, surely you see that—the most terrible weapon the world has seen, designed to destroy not armies or matériel, but the very nature of exchange, our Economy's long struggle to evolve up out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all to the rational systems of control whose blessings we enjoy at present."

* * * * * * * * * *

"it will mean the end of the world, not just 'as we know it' but as anyone knows it"
Yes and that isn't a bad thing for people who aren't billionaire industrialists creating the rules to keep themselves enriched and everybody else desperate enough to do the labor they need cheaply.

"the most terrible weapon the world has seen, designed to destroy not armies or matériel, but the very nature of exchange"
Changing the nature of exchange wouldn't destroy the world. It would, as Scarsdale mentioned, change the world as we know it. Free energy would mean people could live without being yoked to some endless cycle of needing to make money to pay for simply surviving. A large part of surviving would be free, a gift from the modern world to modern people who realize subsistence, in the modern era, shouldn't be the only thing one's time is spent on. Exchange would still happen but on a more personal and local level. It's not like free power will suddenly give everybody the ability to weave a basket. You're still going to need some way to pay for that basket you're obsessing over. Which means you still probably need a job of some kind, or some kind of expertise to trade for the basket. Scarsdale seeing this "tremendous gift" as a "terrible weapon" says so much about Scarsdale Vibe that I feel embarrassed seeing so much of his inner being.

"our Economy's long struggle to evolve up out of the fish-market anarchy"
This is a lie rich and powerful people love to tell. It's the one about how the Economy is somehow a living or organic being that has "evolved" according to some kind of science or natural law. But it hasn't. Economies are man-made. Aspects of our current economy have all been chosen and created by people who could have chosen or created an entirely different thing. If they "evolved" at all, it was due to human intervention by humans who benefitted from the chosen path of "evolution." Obviously rich and powerful people don't want a "fish-market anarchy" because another way of saying that is "free market" and even though they constantly praise free markets, it's truly their biggest nightmare.

"all battling all to the rational systems of control"
All battling all is the free market. It's what capitalists say they want but don't actually. They say they hate regulation which is "the rational systems of control" but in truth they just don't want regulation that limits their excesses and abuses. They constantly lobby the government to make laws and changes that benefit corporations. This is Scarsdale Vibe confessing: the free market is bad and regulations are good. But only by corporate and industrialist definitions. If it means a corporation can pollute to save money, the free market is great and rational systems of control are bad! If the government steps in to protect its citizens, corporations think the opposite.

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 The audacity and scope of the inventor's dreams had always sent Heino Vanderjuice staggering back to his office in Sloane Lab feeling not so much a failure as someone who has taken a wrong turn in the labyrinth of Time and now cannot find his way back to the moment he made it.

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Content Warning: I don't know what I'm talking about.

I suppose one can't help but think of Thomas Pynchon as a postmodern writer. But literary genres are sort of fucked up. I suppose all labels placed on art, in an effort to understand that art, invariably lead to art that is made in an attempt to actively engage that label. So you begin to ascertain levels based on how a piece of art coexists with the genre it's perceived as being part of. The first tier is art that is a true reaction to a previous generation's art. Maybe not entirely conscious of the rebellion inherent in it, simply a visceral, explosive sigh in artistic form. Eventually you get a second tier where people have noticed a number of similar reactions to recent art and create art in the same vein but with a conscious understanding of the new style or delivery of the art. Then there is a third tier in which the artist, having been influenced mostly by the new and current trend against the old, but having little understanding of the old, chooses to make art similar to the new style without any knowledge that it's a response to the constant conversation of generational artists. And lastly, I think, there's the tier that simply copies the style because it's the current style, not thinking one way or the other, in any depth, on what the style means or why it came into vogue. They're simply parroting what seems to be popular. The boundaries on these tiers definitely aren't steep, vertical walls but slowly ascending ramps, perhaps their steady rise sometimes barely noticeable.
    These tiers perhaps make sense, as a way of thinking of artful dialogue, in many cases with new art styles supplanting old styles as the popular form of their time. But I'm not sure if I can reconcile them in postmodern literature. Postmodernism feels too much like a manufactured and purposeful response to modernist literature, never really existing in a space that was simple, visceral reaction. It's often too methodical. It's the first genre which maybe exists after a true loss of innocence (the loss happening during the modernist era). Postmodernism is simply modernism devirginized. It's generally the same reaction about the same things but with a hyperbolic (and maybe (certainly often) ironic) understanding of that reaction. It's no wonder that people tend to think of World War II as the end of modernism and the birth of postmodernism. World War I saw a stark and depressing change in the world's capability of truly understanding and acknowledging (and feeling culpable for) the horrors perpetrated by mankind. World War II witnessed how far those horrors could go, to a seemingly unimaginable end. World War I asked, "How much can human beings stand, and how far will they go?" World War II answered, "This far, assholes."
    All of this is to say, I suppose one can't help but think of Thomas Pynchon as a postmodern writer. He's as conscious as any author has ever been about what he's writing and how he's writing it. He's trying to communicate big ideas about great moments in mankind's history and their effects on simple, everyday individuals. But he often feels like a modernist writer. Which is part of his postmodern game, of course! He's not just writing a story that begins in 1893 in a way that modern audiences can easily digest it. He's writing a story that begins in 1893 that would be easily digestible by people of 1893 but told in a way that winks and smirks at modern audiences. "This is a book about 1893 that isn't about 1893 at all. Did you read my book about World War II that was very much about the Nixon era and Vietnam because it was written in the late 60s/early 70s? Well this one was written at the end of the 20th century/beginning of the 21st century so it's about that time period as well. It won't mention any of that but just be aware, dumb-dumb." You can tell that was a quote I made up by Thomas Pynchon talking to me because it ends with Pynchon saying "dumb-dumb."
    What got me thinking about all of this was Pynchon's sentence "taken a wrong turn in the labyrinth of Time and now cannot find his way back to the moment he made it." How postmodern is it to mention a labyrinth?! And for that labyrinth to be composed of time! I'd categorize modernism as being lost in the labyrinth of the mind and postmodernism as being lost in the labyrinth of time (and the mind and nostalgia and memory and childhood and sexual impotency and advertising and a list of things a labyrinth could be composed of). But not just lost inside a metaphorically geographic space but being lost in trying to return to a specific moment in your life.

"audacity and scope of the inventor's dreams"
This is another great bit. Pynchon doesn't say Vanderjuice is sickened by Tesla's inventions or his accomplishments; he's simply devastated by Tesla's imagination! In a way, this is probably what makes most writer's envious of other writers in the final summation. Maybe Vonnegut's Mother Night has some serious flaws in its construction and its facts, and perhaps it wasn't the most interesting of his books in, say, 1975 or 1993. But it was written in 1961 as an observation of historical events from the previous generation and was prescient in the conversation of Fox News and its terrible hosts in the 21st century. When I first read Mother Night, I wasn't envious that Vonnegut had written that book. I hardly had any life experience to make me see anything monumental about it at all. But in 2021, as a nearly fifty year old man, I am staggered by his imagination, by the audacity and scope of his perception. In other words, his genius makes me nauseated.
    Pynchon, obviously, is of the same scope (if not greater. That's a subjective call that I'm not willing to debate (mostly because I don't know whose side I would be on)). But Pynchon was probably thinking of writers he's envious of when writing this moment; of people within his field who he can only dream of being compared to. I don't know much about Pynchon personally but he must have literary heroes whom he feels dwarf even his greatest works. Maybe Joyce? Melville? Heller, perhaps? Steinbeck?!

Chapter 1: Section 4: Page 33: Line 175 (547)

 Vomit.

* * * * * * * * * *

Not much to say on a one word sentence so let me Gary Busey this one:

VOMIT
Viscous
Ooze
Moving
Inside
Throat.

Or maybe:

VOMIT
Vanderjuice
Obsesses Over
More
Intelligent
Tesla.

Okay maybe that's "voomit." But this is the Internet and according to "lose/loose," vomit may one day be spelled that way. I'm just ahead of the curve. Like Tesla!

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 Every time Tesla's name came up, this was the predictable outcome.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh, I see. I've been corrected. The Professor doesn't feel sick because he's negotiating a business deal with the most cartoonish villain since Montgomery Burns. He's sick because he was reminded that his brain isn't the biggest brain in the metaphorical locker room. Is that a thing? The metaphorical locker room? If not, I apologize for making you think of a bunch of men with their dongs out. Did I need to apologize? Or did you enjoy that? Well then, you're welcome!

At least the Professor thinks like a scientist. Whenever X happens, Y happens! Predictable! But I bet Tesla knew this was a theorem before the Professor did. His brain! So large! So veiny!

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 The Professor was literally having an attack of nausea.

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"literally"
I suppose if Pynchon didn't use the word "literally" here, I'd just assume the Professor was feeling a little queasy in his tum-tum. But by using the word, I now know the Professor is on the verge of ralphing all over the Penthouse because he's just realized how evil the man he's doing business with is.

Chapter 1: Section 4: Page 33: Lines 167-172 (539-544)

 "Back in the spring, Dr. Tesla was able to achieve readings on his transformer of up to a million volts. It does not take a prophet to see where this is headed. He is already talking in private about something he calls a 'World-System,' for producing huge amounts of electrical power that anyone can tap in to for free, anywhere in the world, because it uses the planet as an element in a gigantic resonant circuit. He is naïve enough to think he can get financing for this, from Pierpont, or me, or one or two others. It has escaped his mighty intellect that no one can make any money off an invention like that. To put up money for research into a system of free power would be to throw it away, and violate—hell, betray—the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be."

* * * * * * * * * *

"Dr. Tesla"
Being that Scarsdale Vibe is such a comic book villain with a comic book villain name, Dr. Tesla simply sounds like a super hero. Which he totally was and, I imagine, Pynchon will continue to make him look more and more like one. Because I think, at least so far, Pynchon is really going for a comic book flavor with this book.

"of up to a million volts"
That's an actual lot in 1893 and not some Dr. Evil hilariously too low number, right? I'm only asking because I'm dumb. The only thing I know about electricity is that if your Crossbow arcade game isn't working right and you're holding the trigger, you can touch another piece of metal and get a somewhat pleasant low level shock run through you. Maybe it was just that one machine at the 7-Eleven by the house where I grew up and not all of the machines. Remember, I'm dumb so I don't know how science works.

"does not take a prophet"
"It doesn't take a prophet to see we can't make a profit with Tesla," is what Scarsdale Vibe should have said. I mean, he says it. But not like a comic book villain would have with a nice pun and a tweak of his waxed mustache.

"He is already talking in private"
If it's in private, how does Scarsdale know about it?! He must employ spies working for Tesla!

"a 'World-System,' for producing huge amounts of electrical power that anyone can tap in to for free"
Not just a hero but a socialist as well! That should be expected. In comic books, all super heroes are socialist in that they almost never charge for their heroics. And all comic book villains are capitalists because how else did they get all that money to build that evil lair in which they could hire lots of henchmen for low wages without health insurance to help them build a huge and expensive laser that can destroy the moon? "But why would they destroy the moon?" you might ask. For profit! Duh!

"uses the planet as an element in a gigantic resonant circuit"
Here's what I can find on the Internet when I search for "resonant circuit for dumbies":

"A resonant circuit is formed when a capacitor and inductor (coil) are in parallel or in series. The two circuit elements will block or pass a single specific frequency out of a divers mix. For this reason, resonant circuits make possible radio and TV transmission and reception and perform many other useful tasks."

Well, that explains that! I'm so glad I understand it now! Of course that's why they make TV and radio possible! Duh! So obvious! Now imagine if the Earth were a resonant circuit! We would have like a million more television shows, right?!

"He is naïve enough to think he can get financing for this"
This is why the government should fund experiments in science and technology. Because science and technology should make the world a better place for everybody, not just for the investors who then have a right to own it and partial it out to only people who can pay the exorbitant prices charged for access to it.

"Pierpont"
John Pierpont Morgan. A rich American bastard who exploited loads of people and stole ungodly amounts of money from the general economy. Eventually in 1900, J.P. Morgan does invest in Tesla because Scarsdale Vibe doesn't know as much as he thinks he knows! Except maybe he does because J.P. Morgan invests in Tesla to build a better telegraph system and Tesla immediately decided to work on the free power deal instead. Morgan, as Vibe notes, realized he couldn't make any money on owning 51% of free power and killed the deal, the selfish rich bastard. He had so much money but he could only invest in things that made him more money? What a jerk. Morgan died peacefully at the age of 76 because there is no God.

"It has escaped his mighty intellect that no one can make any money off an invention like that."
It has escaped Scarsdale's mighty intellect that not all people are selfish twats and so maybe profit isn't their only concern. But then again, Scarsdale has the kind of thinking you'd find in the brain of a modern Conservative in which only profit matters and life must be earned. So free energy has two faults: it doesn't make any money and it freely gives people something they, apparently, don't deserve.

"To put up money for research into a system of free power would be to throw it away, and violate—hell, betray—the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be."
People who think they're smart actually believe crap like this. They believe only profit motivates. They believe only competition can improve a system. They believe money invested for the betterment of mankind is money wasted. They believe modern history is made by rich and powerful men who make decisions based on numbers and not people. Maybe that's true. Maybe that is what modern history is and maybe to try anything else is to betray modern history. But if that's the case, I'm ready to fucking betray it. As Huck Finn said, "All right, then, I'll go to hell."