Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 52: Line 143 (936)

 "It may not be quite the West you're expecting," Professor Vanderjuice put in.

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How does Vanderjuice know what West Lew Basnight is expecting? In 1893, if you were moving west from Chicago, how wild and lawless did you expect it to be? Looking up a timeline, it wasn't until 1844 that Oregon City became the first incorporated city west of the Rocky Mountains. So let's say 50 years of "civilization" digging in its fancy heels. At the tail end of those fifty years later, a bunch of Western and Midwestern states are only just being admitted into the Union. Much of the famous Wild West outlaws are still making waves although their time is quickly waning. The massacre of hundreds of Lakota Sioux has just recently taken place at Wounded Knee. So I imagine somebody going from Chicago to Denver would still be expecting a dangerous frontier (I'd say mostly from law men and the military but the press has probably taken their sides through most of the breaking news).

Is Vanderjuice's statement an indication of how much technology has crept across the west? In 1881, San Jose, California, became the first city west of the Rocky Mountains with electric civic lighting. No wonder the area became Silicon Valley! Always on the forefront of technology, right? Anyway, that's twelve years prior to Vanderjuice saying this sentence. And Vanderjuice, being a technological scientist (and a knower of the world's secrets which he sends the Chums of Chance to investigate or stop or help spread), probably knows exactly what kind of west Lew Basnight is headed for. Less a Wild West frontier and maybe a frontier of technology and changing social ideas.

Or maybe Vanderjuice will explain what he means in the paragraph of dialogue that follows this! If he does, at least I've prepared myself with a tiny little foundation of western knowledge.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 52: Lines 141-142 (934-935)

 "At least they tell you where it is you'll be sent off to. After the closing-day ceremonies here, our future's all a blank."

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"they tell you where it is you'll be sent off to"
"They" tell you a lot of stuff about how things will be but only time can tell you how things were. Randolph's vague "Denver" isn't a whole lot more helpful than Randolph's unknown next location.

"our future's all a blank"
But it isn't, is it? Pynchon has already written the book. The pages are full. It's just that Randolph has no awareness of that future yet. Pynchon is writing a book where he drops the reader into an 1893 timeline. The reader knows, if only vaguely, the Randolph's world's twists and turns and, while not its ultimate destination, at least as far as mile marker 2022 (or later, for the future readers). Randolph's future isn't blank. Nobody's future is blank. It is merely unknown. It is yet to be revealed. Time is like a book already written and life like the reader's eyes moving across the page. Some may look at it more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where they have some illusion of free will about the outcome, and others are content to believe what will happen will happen, and always will happen, or always has happened. Randolph's future is anything but blank. Even when Pynchon wrote that line, he probably already knew how Randolph's story will conclude in this book. Or, at least, the point where Pynchon will leave off Randolph's story. Will Randolph's future be blank then? I suppose time will tell, no?