Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 36: Line 5 (587)

 Inconvenience would fit right in, as one more effect whose only purpose was to entertain.

* * * * * * * * * *

This fits with how this book has started, as an easily accessible boy's adventure novel. "Don't worry, readers! This big airship is just a standard entertainment! Just a bit of adventuring fluff! It doesn't represent anything else at all!" Even though it probably does represent something else. Early on, I speculated that the Inconvenience represents the book Against the Day itself. This sentence is pretty good evidence toward that supposition. Here we have a book, Against the Day, whose only purpose is to entertain. But that's the illusion of it. It's actually there to observe the people. And what else does good literature purport to do other than reflect a mirror back on the reader, as if it had been spying on us all along.

Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 36: Line 4 (586)

 Fairgoers would see the ship overhead and yet not see it, for at the Fair, where miracles were routinely expected, nothing this summer was too big, too fast, too fantastically rigged out to impress anybody for more than a minute and a half, before the next marvel appeared.

* * * * * * * * * *

In other words, it's a perfect way to spy on Fairgoers. It's not suspicious because it's just as awesome as every single other thing at the Fair.

Is Pynchon also discussing subtext of the novel as it's about to transition from Boy's Adventure Novel to something else, something more difficult? Here we are at the Fair in a vaguely steampunk Boy's Adventure Novel with so many amazing and fantastic things to read about that the reader hardly notices the subtext at all! All the exhibits and wonders described at the Fair? Were they just there to amaze readers with the attractions the boys were seeing? Or did they all have a deeper meaning to the white imperialism subtext pervading this entire chapter? Who would notice the subtext with all this other crazy stuff to look at!

"too fantastically rigged out to impress anybody for more than a minute and a half, before the next marvel appeared"
This describes reading this book so densely packed with examples and allusions to various imperialist operations happening around the globe. Each one is described one sentence after another, giving the reader no time to really wrap their head around each one. Reading this book multiple sentences, multiple paragraphs, multiple pages at a time leaves little room for contemplation of everything that was just read. The only way to take in all of these sights is to slow down and take them one at a time, or in other words, "to single up all the lines."
    This is one of the reasons people take television so less serious an art form than movies. Because television programs come at you non-stop, one after the other, leaving little time to think about or discuss with others what was just experienced. Whereas movies give you an immediate break afterward, whereupon the viewer can walk out and ponder what was just experienced, perhaps discussing it on the way home with a friend with whom they had gone to see it.
    Maybe that's all changed now with streaming services and everything instantly at our disposal. But in some ways, it's also worse. When you binge a full season of a show, you barely think about it at all. It's a visceral experience, felt more than thought about. Have you ever noticed how when seasons of a show drop the full season at one time, when you're ready to watch the second season you can hardly remember the details of the first season? This probably doesn't happen if you've had repeat viewings or if you engage in discussion of the program online. But that's sort of the point! Marvels that appear before you for a minute and a half apiece are soon forgotten. More time must be put in. Understanding and comprehension take patience.

Doing this project has taught me two main things: 1. Reading a book by stopping after each sentence and contemplating that sentence as much as possible truly fills out the experience of the book; and 2. Life is too short to read very many books this way but now it's the only way I want to read them.

Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 36: Line 3 (585)

 If there were any plots afoot to commit bomb or other outrages upon the Fair, the Inconvenience was ideal not only for scanning the grounds fence to fence, but also for keeping an eye out against any sea-borne assaults contemplated from the Lake side.

* * * * * * * * * *

When the Chums weren't on "ground-leave," they were busy spying from the air on the Fair in attempt to find labor organizers who might cause trouble with the status quo (the status quo being terrible and dangerous labor practices by employers). They didn't know they were trying to find labor organizers. They thought they were stopping potential anarchists from blowing things up for the pure pleasure of anarchy. But "anarchist" was just coded language for "disgruntled employee who has no other options than to cause some kind of uproar." This was an official assignment and like all official assignments given to the majority of people in America, it wasn't truthfully represented to them. This was to make it easier for them to do rather than burdening them with questions of ethics and morality. In America, "shades of gray" is just another way of saying "loss of profits."

Later we'll see that maybe there's another reason to worry about violent threats because an important European figure presents himself at the Fair and his death could cause a lot of trouble! Or will cause a lot of trouble eventually? But as long as it doesn't cause trouble at the Fair, that's the important thing! But never mind that! I'm getting ahead of the plot and that would mean I'd lose points on this assignment if I were back in my Children's Lit course in college!

Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 36: Line 2 (584)

 The harsh nonfictional world waited outside the White City's limits, held off for this brief summer, making the entire commemorative season beside Lake Michigan at once dream-like and real.

* * * * * * * * * *

"The harsh nonfictional world"
In plot terms, the "real" world of Pynchon's Against the Day America. In book terms, the actual real world that exists outside Against the Day's limits.

"at once dream-like and real"
The Fair seemed "dream-like and real," a seeming paradox, because it was both a highly manufactured imaginative setting and set outside of reality within its own walls. So it was dream-like in its construction, exhibits, and state-of-the-art technology and architecture. But it was real in that it was a bubble unto itself. The outside world could not intrude so that a person, while within it, knew only the reality of the Fair. Dream-like. And real.

My ultimate goal is for my reality to seem dream-like. There are a handful of moments in my life when I have achieved this reality, if only for the most transient of moments. Perhaps not the most serene but quite close is one I think about fondly: I was sat cross-legged on the living room carpet in the middle of a friend's sister's high school party, tripping pleasantly on LSD, sipping on a can of who-can-even-remember-what-brand beer and just watching the revelry. Nobody disturbed me, seemingly seeing nothing wrong with my position, as if I were an ottoman or an end table. I wouldn't mind still being there. And perhaps I am, in a way.

Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 36: Line 1 (583)

 The Chums of Chance could have been granted no more appropriate form of "ground-leave" than the Chicago Fair, as the great national celebration possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and agency.

* * * * * * * * * *

Have I gotten to the difficult sections of the book already?! I say "already" as if thirty-six pages in Gravity's Rainbow wasn't already tremendously difficult. I should be saying finally! Even on the most shallow, literal level, this sentence is boggling my mind. Why would the fictitiousness of the Fair permit the boys access and agency?

I suppose "the fictitiousness of the Fair" gives the boys access because they are young white boys in America treading freely among all the various populations and cultures that are presenting exhibits at the Fair. Would they, anywhere else, have easy and safe access to hoochie-coochie dancers, Reindeer Shows, Zulu warriors demonstrating their techniques for defeating the white man, Pygmy tribes partially ruined by missionaries, Wazaris displaying their skills at banditry, and Tarahumara Indians tripping on peyote? Their education on various cultures could be done at their own pace and without fear of intruding on indigenous people in their homes. And while fictitious, they might still be able to learn something of the majesty and pride of other peoples de-centered from American civilization. "Ground-leave" anywhere else in the world would have meant access was conditional, depending on where they were and what people lived there. But the Fair? Everybody was welcome if they merely had fifty extra cents in their pockets.

And what about their agency? Pretty much the same deal, I suppose! They were free in the fictional world of the Fair to go where they wanted at their leisure without fear of stumbling into adult rules and regulations, or local laws and customs. Since Pynchon has already done a number of Star Trek analogies in the series, the Fair was like the Chums visiting the Holodeck. They were ultimately always in control of their environment with almost certain built-in safety protocols within the Fair's walls.

On a less literal level, the boys themselves are fictional. So inserting them into a fictionalized Chicago's Fair that was already literally fictional gives them more freedom than if Pynchon had placed them within the constraints of a fully realized historical event. The Fair was as much fantasy as reality and if Pynchon wants to pretend there was basically a Donkey Show in the middle of the Fair, what harm is there in that?!

Fictional boys in a fictional setting based on a real setting that was filled with exhibits which were inherently fictional. Does literature get any better than this?