Chapter 1: Section 6: Pages 51-52: Line 126 (919)

 After a couple-three slow puffs, "Ever come out of work in this town when the light's still in the sky and the lamps are just being lit along the big avenues and down by the Lake, and the girls are all out of the offices and shops and heading home, and the steak houses are cranking up for the evening trade, and the plate-glass windows are shining, with the rigs all lined up by the hotels, and—"

* * * * * * * * * *

Lew takes a slow moment to think about it and then gives evidence for how it's going to cost Nate quite a bit of money to get him to leave Chicago for Denver.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 125 (918)

 Lew reached for a panatela and lit up.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sounds like Lew is considering the cost of the favor Nate is asking of him.

"panatela"
A long thin cigar. I don't know how this is a penis joke but since Pynchon wrote it, I'm sure it's funny.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Lines 122-124 (915-917)

 "Lew, it's gold and silver mining out there. Nuggets for the picking up. Favors that you can name your own price."

* * * * * * * * * *

Here we see how capitalism keeps most Americans down. Because this is the intersection of making money and keeping other people from making money. There's lots of money in mining which means a lot of people not doing any mining are going to want their hands on that money and are willing to pay other people for information that can be used to take that money out of the hands of the people actually doing the mining. Money enough for everybody except the poor sods who are actually pulling the gold and silver out of the earth. So much money that if somebody comes along and says, "Hey, I want to find a way to steal the claim from that old guy down the canyon . . . you know, the one with the donkey?", you can say, "Well, I reckon that's gonna cost twenty thousand dollars." And the person, knowing exactly how much money is in the ground out there, will instantly put out their hand and scream, "Deal, sucker!"

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Lines 120-121 (913-914)

 "O.K, boss, I get the drift. It's not up to you, that what you're about to say?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Nate's a coward and Lew let's Nate know he knows. Obviously it's up to Nate; it's his agency!

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 119 (912)

 As if this were a real question, Lew began to recite names of plausible colleagues, all of them with an edge on him in seniority, till Nate's frown had grown deep enough.

* * * * * * * * * *

"As if this were a real question"
The question: "Who better than Lew to ramrod the operation?" Lew decides to point out all of the people who would be a better fit. But since it wasn't a real question, Nate shows his displeasure at the path this conversation has gone down. He's sending Lew and it was never meant to be a discussion.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 118 (911)

 W.C.I. had decided to open a Denver office, Nate explained, and with more Anarchists per square foot out there than a man could begin to combat, who better than Lew to ramrod the operation?

* * * * * * * * * *

They'll have to change the Denver office's name from White City Investigations to Mile High Investigations. Or, I suppose, the whole "White City" connotations still fit. You know the kinds of people they mostly investigate. You know.

"more Anarchists per square foot out there"
Why are there more Anarchists in Denver than Chicago? Does it have something to do with frontier life? My guess is that the further west you go, the more "anarchists" you're going to find. Because what type of people would move west? Those who are tired of all the bullshit rules established on the east coast. Also there's probably a ton of people blowing up railroad trestles in an attempt to hit the railroad barons in the pocketbooks until they decide to improve working conditions and pay.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Lines 116-117 (909-910)

 "Lew, you card! Be serious!"

* * * * * * * * * *

In other words, "Yes, Lew, that's exactly what I'm doing but you can't be that direct. You have to let me spin it in a way that doesn't make it look like my motives are selfish and shitty."

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 115 (908)

 "What 'region' is it I'm being packed off to, Nate?"

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Why would Nate be sending Lew away? So the Pinkerton's can't get their hands on him? Or is there more money to be made spying on people somewhere else in the country? "Like, say, Denver to spy on the railroads" is something a person who glanced ahead a line and saw the word "Denver" might say.

I'm ashamed to admit I've never been packed off by a company to another location. Mostly I always just quit jobs after they hurt my feelings for one reason or another. Never let a person who's paying you think they can treat you like shit!

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 114 (907)

 Lew looked up, poker-faced.

* * * * * * * * * *

Now I'm going to have that song stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

"poker-faced"
Displaying no emotion. But displaying no emotion while understanding emotion. You can't just display no emotion like Data. A poker-face is meant to show the person across the table from you that you're hiding something, like joy at your hand or the pain of existence. But if you're Data, that's just your normal face. I suppose that works to your benefit in poker. Except Data doesn't know how to bluff so you don't have to read his face. If he's betting, he's betting the perfect amount for the risk of the hand he's currently holding. Data sucks at poker.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Lines 112-113 (905-906)

 One day he came bounding into Lew's office surrounded by a nimbus of cheer phony as nickel-a-quart bay rum—"Good news, Agent Basnight, another step up your personal career ladder! How does . . . 'Regional Director' sound?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Sounds like a scam to foist some of the failing business onto Lew.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 111 (904)

 The discontent became evident in the White City shop as well, as The Unsleeping Eye began to lure away personnel, soon more of them than Nate could afford to lose.

* * * * * * * * * *

"The Unsleeping Eye"
The Pinkerton code was "We never sleep."

This feels like an Injury to the Eye is about to happen.

When a company feels like another company is cutting into their business, instead of making their company more appealing and efficient, they tend to either try to run the other company out of business or simply purchase the entire thing. Nate's probably panicking because eventually he might lose his cash cow, Lew, to the Pinkerton's. Remember, even Nate admitted the Pinkerton's pay better!

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 110 (903)

 Of course this provoked some grumbling in the business, mainly from Pinkerton's, who, having assumed American Anarchism was their own personal cookie jar, wondered how an upstart like White City dared aspire to more than crumbs.

* * * * * * * * * *

It's capitalism, baby! If there's money to be made in painting protestors just trying to make life better as anarchists, paint away! But also maybe find a way to squash any competition because how dare anybody else make any money off of making the world miserable for a whole lot of people.

Why would the Pinkertons want to share in this business? They're making fistfuls of money by perpetrating terrible acts of violence against a population that nobody cares about! Who would want to share in that windfall?!

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 109 (902)

 Soon, along with dozens of file drawers stuffed with the information he brought back, Lew had moved into his own office, at whose doorsill functionaries of government and industry presently began to appear, having surrendered their hats in the outer office, to ask respectfully for advice which Nate Privett kept a keen eye on the market value of.

* * * * * * * * * *

As we've really learned so well in this digital age, businesses make a lot of money by simply gathering and redistributing information. Lew is an expert at observing and Nate is taking advantage of that. Lew gathers intel on the front lines of the workers' movement while in disguise and Nate sells that information to the people who want to quash the movement. Lew is currently a middleman for helping to keep workers in abhorrent conditions although this sentence doesn't express Lew's attitude. We don't see exactly what information Lew is passing on. Will he sabotage the effort to destroy the striking workers or hold back? Does Lew even pick a side? Although, I suppose, if he chooses to not pick a side, he's picking the side of the powerful. Pretending you're above the fight doesn't make you intellectually superior because you refuse to get dragged into the conflict; it simply makes you a tool of the powers that be. They want you disinterested. They want you looking at more pleasant things. They, in fact, depend on it.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 108 (901)

 He found himself out by factory fences breathing coal-smoke, walking picket lines in various of W.C.I.'s thousand disguises, learning enough of several Slavic tongues to be plausible down in the deadfalls where the desperate malcontents convened, fingerless slaughterhouse veterans, irregulars in the army of sorrow, prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate.

* * * * * * * * * *

I know this book was written in 2006 but it fucking hurts my heart that Pynchon is describing the world of 1893 and, aside from maybe many of the people picketing being fingerless, nothing much has changed. America's wardens have done a pretty good job of simply giving out enough slack to quiet enough people so that things hardly change at all. And when things do change, you can bet the pendulum will eventually swing back—maybe not quite as far—to take back much of what they resented giving away. What do you think Reagan's 80s were? It was the pendulum swinging back as far as they could get it. And what do you think is happening right now? The rich and powerful have once again stoked the powers of racism and xenophobia to get the white poor and working class to help push the pendulum back as far as they can get it.

"prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate"
These days, you don't even need America's wardens to shut down the prophersiers. Now all it takes is a bunch of moderate centrists to tell anybody who'll listen that a better world isn't realistically possible. Centrists are Goddamned dream killers. I suppose they always have been. It's the people who are comfortable in the current status quo who don't want to make any waves even if making waves is necessary for the lifting up of all the boats chained to the bottom that can't, for traditional, systemic, and racist reasons, rise with the tide.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 107 (900)

 Anarchist-related tickets began landing on his desk with some regularity.

* * * * * * * * * *

Better Lew's desk than some ex-cop fired from the force because he loved to bust people's heads too much. His fellow cops, busting heads right beside him, were probably all, "Yeesh, Frank. At least try to hide the boner."

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 106 (899)

  Anarchists and heads of state being defined these days as natural enemies, Lew by this logic became the natural gumshoe to be taking aim at Anarchists, wherever they happened to pop up in the shooting gallery of day-to-day history.

* * * * * * * * * *

There it is explicit. Everybody assumes, since Lew was Ferdinand's handler, that he's pro the rich and powerful while anti the poor and working class. So Nate sent him to the Anarchy meeting expecting that Lew couldn't sympathize with people he found disgusting and so would learn some intel that would help stop them in their fight against their employers. But it probably works the other way too. If anybody at the meeting recognized Lew as somebody who has been seen around town with the foreign leader, they'll automatically assume he's trying to infiltrate the movement. But all that other stuff I said about Line 104 is the part of this that's unstated. By saying that it's hanging out with the Archduke that caused everybody to think he's the enemy of the working class, Lew is suggesting that it isn't true at all. As we've seen, he's actually gained sympathy for the movement by attending the meeting.

So his job as handler of the Archduke has led to another job to keep an eye on the Anarchists simply because of the assumptions made about the job he was paid to do. As if somebody being paid has to believe in the work they're doing! If that were true, nothing would ever get done in America!

I'm not saying people should be taking jobs they find unethical! I'm just saying you don't have to love feeding people hamburgers just to throw a fucking slab of meat on a grill at Burger King. I guess it helps though. Man, I'd love to get off on feeding people hamburgers! I'd be king of the King, slinging Whoppers while singing and dancing.

Man, I just wish I loved doing anything as much as I love doing absolutely nothing.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 105 (898)

 Look after one royal, everybody starts making assumptions.

* * * * * * * * * *

Okay, okay! I made my own assumption as to what happened because of the Austrian Archduke! This clarifies the "it" a little more (although not yet spelling it out). "It" must be the way people are now treating Lew because he was the handler of Franz Ferdinand. Perhaps it's the way they reveal their true terrible natures to him, thinking, "This guy hangs out with the rich and powerful so he must hate poor people too!" Or maybe people just assume Lew is rich now and expect him to buy drinks down at the corner bar.

Sometimes there are benefits to reading a book one line at a time and considering carefully every line. And then sometimes there are moments where a line is just building up to the next line and I really should read more before I open my stupid mouth (via my stupid typing fingers).

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 51: Line 104 (897)

 It must have been that Austrian Archduke.

* * * * * * * * * *

This is the first sentence after an asterisked break from the last scene. Without further context, I'm guessing the "it" refers to Lew's suddenly sympathetic attitude toward the workers and anarchists. After spending so much time up close to a rich and powerful man who treats people in the world as his play things and hunting prey, Lew has begun to see the world differently. The rich aren't making the world a better place, no matter how many jobs they create or how little they give to charity while making as large a public spectacle as they can about their philanthropy. They don't bring order or law or justice. They bring chaos and cause poverty and abuse anybody they can for whatever whim comes over them.

It's also possible the "it" refers to something else which the next sentence will explain!