Newsboys cried the tale, and rumors flew like bugs in summer.
**********
"Newsboys"
Young dudes who carried the news.
"rumors flew like bugs in summer"
We barely have any rumors at all on the West Coast if this is the simile. The Midwest is disgusting. Except for the Fireflies. Those are cool. Put on the right music and it's like a rave driving down the Interstate at night. But be sure to have plenty of wiper fluid!
Merle arrived to find the "Forest City" obsessed by the pursuit of genial desperado Blinky Morgan, who was being sought for allegedly murdering a police detective while trying to rescue a member of his gang who'd been picked up on a fur-robbery charge.
**********
"Forest City"
Cleveland's nickname based on an Alex de Tocqueville description in Democracy in America from 1835. Like Blake's America a Prophecy, we have another text written concerning the state of America and democracy, observations of the New World's grand experiment. I read only a little on Tocqueville so my instant judgment of him as "the early 19th Century Ayn Rand" probably doesn't hold a lot of water.
"genial desperado"
The friendly criminal.
"Blinky Morgan"
The leader of a gang of fur thieves, summarized by Pynchon in the rest of the sentence. The dates of the Blinky Morgan fur robbery on January 26th, 1887 to the capture of Blinky on June 28th, 1887, overlap the dates of the Michelson-Morley Experiment (April to July, 1887). The town was obsessed with his pursuit because there was a reward of $16,000 dollars for Blinky and his gang's capture. Also maybe because he killed a detective but people probably hated detectives properly back then.
So despite days and nights of traveling, Merle had an eerie sense of not having left Connecticut—same plain gable-front houses, white Congregational church steeples, even stone fences—more Connecticut, just shifted west, was all.
**********
Even though the Connecticut land ceded to Pennsylvania had happened about one hundred years ago, the Connecticut settlers who had not been killed in the Pennamite-Yankee Wars were granted Pennsylvania citizenship and allowed to keep their lands. Which means Northern Pennsylvania has its roots in Connecticut culture.
"So despite days and nights of traveling"
Movement without movement. Like the vortex Heino Vanderjuice mentions earlier. Or like a pinwheel where movement and stasis are somehow combined. Lack of change means lack of movement, lack of advancement. What does this mean for Merle?
"an eerie sense"
This feels a bit paranormal, something akin to the opposite of unheimlich (un-unheimlich?), where Merle is feeling a sense of home but in a strange place (not heimlich because it is eerie and, so, un-unheimlich!). It's as if, as a person from Connecticut, the frontier does not exist for Merle because it's Connecticut all the way down.
"just shifted west"
Perhaps a reference to light and how it retains the same speed (or, in the analogy, the same architecture of Connecticut) but shifts from red to blue or blue to red depending on the viewer's relationship to the light's movement. This land looks like Connecticut but shifted west, or viewed from the future (Merle) looking into the past (or is it the opposite being that the land Merle has arrived in is newer than the land he came from?). Being that light is our major theme at the moment, the usage of "shifted" has to be referencing the properties of light, especially since this shift is based on what Merle is seeing around him. He's moving west, toward the future, but looking into the east, the past. I guess that's kind of a property of light too! That whatever we see is already past due to how long it takes light to hit our optical organs.
This strip of Ohio due west of Connecticut had for years, since before American independence, been considered part of Connecticut's original land grant.
**********
I think this strip specifically might be what is known as the Western Reserve and possibly the strip through Pennsylvania was just known as "Settle Here at Your Own Risk"? Or maybe it's just because the land was given to Pennsylvania as America was being established and the Ohio portion was simply more Connecticut until the state ceded the land to the United States as part of the Northwest Territory in 1800. But not before Moses Cleaveland founded the worst city in the United States!
Anyway, the university where Merle is headed was called the Case Western Reserve University except that Pynchon refers to it as the Case Institute, something it wouldn't be called for decades. Which is weird because calling it by its original name fits in so much better with Merle's story!
Merle had been born and raised in northwest Connecticut, a region of clockmakers, gunsmiths, and inspired thinkers, so his trip out to the Western Reserve was just a personal expression of Yankee migration generally.
**********
"northwest Connecticut"
The county of Litchfield, or possibly Hartford. Having grown up as a Bay Area resident in California, I know that looking at a map and describing the area of the state I grew up in as "Northern California" can seem to be at odds, so I won't judge if the people of Connecticut want to call Hartford County "northwest Connecticut."
"a region of clockmakers, gunsmiths, and inspired thinkers"
Seeing as how gunsmith is included here and assuming Pynchon means Samuel Colt who was from Hartford, it strengthens the argument for northwest Connecticut being Hartford County. Not to mention how every mention of Merle in Connecticut has been in relation to Hartford and Yale. Oliver Winchester was also from Connecticut but New Haven County rather than Hartford and New Haven is decidedly southern Connecticut.
Eli Terry is probably the clockmaker, also from Hartford County although he later moved to Northbury (later Plymouth) in Litchfield County so maybe I'll just believe northwest Connecticut applies to both counties. Apparently his work ignited the industrial revolution so that's probably important.
I don't know who the inspired thinkers might be there are too many people who could fall under that category. J.P. Morgan is from Hartford so we'll just go with him as the best example since he'll probably be important later.
"Western Reserve"
The original charter for Connecticut from 1662 marked its western border as the "South Sea" (Pacific Ocean). So Connecticut was a long-ass state. Almost immediately there were conflicts with New York which were ultimately resolved so that the long stretch of land to the Pacific was cut off from the rest of Connecticut by New York's dangly bit. The portion of Connecticut west of New York was called the Western Reserve. Unluckily, Pennsylvania also had claims to this land via the Dutch and also because it was sold to them by the Iroquois which seems like a reasonable trick to play on the European invaders.
"personal expression of Yankee migration generally"
Merle is headed toward Cleveland, Ohio, which would have one time been a part of Connecticut according to the original charter and the Western Reserve. So Merle's trip can be seen as merely an example of another Connecticut Yankee heading out to settle Connecticut's western frontier. He refers to himself as "Yankee" to remind the reader of the Pennamite-Yankee War fought between the people of Pennsylvania and the people of Connecticut over this chunk of land. I use the verb "remind" so it seems like I once knew about this interstate war but had forgotten about it. And maybe that's true and I didn't just learn about it this late in life because how am I supposed to remember what I have forgotten?
"Mr. Rideout, we wander at the present moment through a sort of vorticalist twilight, holding up the lantern of the Maxwell Field Equations and squinting to find our way. Michelson's done this experiment before, in Berlin, but never so carefully. This new one could be the giant arc-lamp we need to light our way into the coming century. I don't know the man personally, but I'll write you a letter of introduction anyway, it can't hurt."
**********
"Mr. Rideout"
That'd be Merle! He's the guy with whom Heino is speaking! Try to keep up!
"wander at the present moment"
To wander: "walk or move in a leisurely, casual, or aimless way." Vanderjuice surely means to invoke the aimless choice in that definition due to science's current lack of knowledge about Æther (what is known at "the present moment").
"The present moment" can be seen as a boundary or a dividing line between the past and the future. It contains all movement, all discovery. Pynchon sees this particular present moment (the end of the 19th Century and, probably the beginning of the 20th Century, judging by the size of the book!) as a critical juncture between many old academic ideas and what they will be replaced by. Or, perhaps, what new ideas will be killed by those who have gotten rich off the old ideas.
"a sort of vorticalist twilight"
The darkness of a deadly storm (vortex/tornado/hurricane) with a hint of danger due to the high winds and debris of cast aside or outdated theories. That's probably what he means! "Look out! Hollow Earth theory coming right at your head!"
"the lantern of the Maxwell Field Equations"
Published in 1861 and 1862, they proposed that light was an electromagnetic phenomenon, unifying theories on light, magnetism, electricity, and electromagnetic radiation, which had all been described previously as separate phenomena. Anyway, that's the simple gist of the Wikipedia entry and even that summation is threatening to crack open my brain. I suppose I should understand how light works much better than I currently do, seeing as how this book (at least this first section), is really focusing on the light theme.
This phrasing is clever because the lantern is what is needed to make our way through the darkness and the lantern uses light and the Maxwell Field Equations provide answers to how light works to help us see our way to understanding light. And electricity. And, um, magnetism. Reading the rest of the Maxwell Equations Wiki entry has provided little help except to remind me how dumb I am.
"Michelson's done this experiment before, in Berlin, but never so carefully"
The problem with Michelson's previous experiment was that his device was subject to experimental errors too large to provide any meaningful results.
"This new one could be the giant arc-lamp we need to light our way into the coming century"
Fitting words as this experiment will, more or less, destroy science's fascination with Æther, allowing it to move forward in different directions, and eventually leading to Einstein's theory of relativity. Also fitting because he compares it to a giant arc-lamp needed to light the way. Again, he uses the metaphor of light to describe our ever-increasing knowledge of light itself. Also knowledge is always said to illuminate. I can't do all the math needed to understand how magnets create electricity which produce light (or whatever is going on there!), so instead I just look for dumb metaphors and apt analogies! I haven't taken a calculus class in 30 years but I've re-read like twelve Xanth novels in the last few years so that probably explains my intelligence level.
"it can't hurt"
When somebody says, "To tell the truth" or "To be honest," they've either just previously lied to you or are about to lie to you. In the same vain (vane? vein?), when somebody says, "It can't hurt," you better believe it fucking will.
"Think this is worth going out to Cleveland for?"
**********
Is anything worth going out to Cleveland for?
I'd suggest the use of Cleveland might be some clue to something Pynchon is saying, like how boundaries "cleave" the "land." But, historically, that's just where the experiment took place.
Indeed one finds in the devout Ætherist a propensity of character ever toward the continuous as against the discrete. Not to mention a vast patience with all those tiny whirlpools the theory has come to require."
**********
Damn. This whole "continuous versus discrete" thing is probably really important to the bigger picture! This sounds like he's talking about something more than just dissecting light and electromagnetic waves and an imaginary substance filling up our nostrils and buttholes. Since Vanderjuice's monologue (which ends with these two lines) is about the faith often needed to believe in Æther, I should just view this as an analogy of religion. Even though Ætherist looks like Atheist, the Ætherist would be the stand-in for a true believer. Their view is toward the infinite and the continuous, the undying soul that continues on in both directions from the finite body it only momentarily possesses. While the Atheist exists in our discrete and finite mortality, the only life we have to live. The Atheist's view is also the more scientific view, being that perception of evidence is only possible with our consciousness which only exists while we're alive.
"a vast patience with all those tiny whirlpools the theory has come to require"
While this can describe a scientific theory, it's a poor theory which scientists would probably only use because it was somehow working for some instance but knowing something better and which made more sense without needing a ton of exceptions would come along. So, really, the tiny whirlpools would be religious dogma needed to explain The Bible better, or to handwave away obvious contradictions.
It certainly depends on a belief in the waviness of light—if light were particulate, it could just go blasting through empty space with no need for any Æther to carry it.
**********
Vanderjuice hits upon one of the greatest oddities in physics: the wave-particle duality. We now know light goes blasting through empty space. But it still acts like a wave in so many other regards. I don't know anything about physics (except how to strike a pool ball a certain way to get it to go where I want!) and even less about quantum physics. Maybe quantum physics explains this odd duality better, where something acts like a particle on Tuesday and then a wave on Thursday. But it seems to me there must be a third thing that is both somehow and we're all just too stupid to come up with an satisfying equation for it. It's probably because you can only understand the properties of the warticle when observing it from a higher dimension. Like in a balloon. Man, I sure miss the easy reading of the Chums of Chance chapters!
Sir Oliver Lodge defined it as 'one continuous substance filling all space, which can vibrate light . . . be sheared into positive and negative electricity,' and so on in a lengthy list, almost like the Apostle's Creed.
**********
"Sir Oliver Lodge"
Vanderjuice probably found this quote in Modern Views of Electricity from 1889 but I'm not going to read that book just to verify it. Sir Oliver Lodge also wrote a book in 1925 called Ether and Reality in which he defends his definition of Æther even though it was already a scientific relic of the last century. His need to believe in an invisible substance with a major effect on reality probably stemmed from his deep conviction in the afterlife, having been convinced by several mediums that he could speak with his son Raymond who had died in the First World War. His belief in spiritualism was seen as quite a flaw in the scientific community because Sir Oliver Lodge had pushed the knowledge of electricity and electromagnetic fields forward by some distance. He even received a patent used in radio which Marconi ultimately had to pay him to use. And spark plugs! His family sold spark plugs!
"one continuous substance filling all space"
For some reason, this brings to my mind this quote from Gravity's Rainbow: “If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.” It's as if Lodge's view of Æther is that of the paranoiac: the connection of everything to everything else via some invisible substance gives comfort. It is all connected. There's a strong meaning to be found in having things connected.
"which can vibrate light"
I suppose the vibrations of the Æther is what supposedly propagates the waves of light.
"be sheared into positive and negative electricity"
Is that how we get electricity? Shine light into a razor sharp angle so that it is split into positive and negative charges? It doesn't seem right but then it also kind of seems right in that static electricity is pretty much the shearing off of electrons onto something that isn't particularly capable of holding strongly onto those electrons and, as such, you shock the face of your cat and it gets pissed at you.
"Apostle's Creed"
First off, Mr. Pynchon, it is "Apostles' Creed." Normally I would put this blame on Vanderjuice, the speaker, but since there's no audible difference between the versions, I'm going to have to blame Pynchon, the colossal hack writer. Anyway, I only know that because being raised an areligious person, I had to look up what the hell the Apostles' Creed was. It's just a litany of "I believe" statements. I guess, in religion, that's how you argue logically. You just keep restating to yourself, again and again, that you believe in nonsense because if you ever stop declaring you believe it, you might actually think about it and see the pure nonsense yourself. So what Vanderjuice is saying is that Lodge's writing about Æther pretty much just amounts to a bunch of "I believe" statements without seeing any need to back them up with evidence. The colossal hack!
Lord Salisbury said it was only a noun for the verb 'to undulate.'
**********
"Lord Salisbury"
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times in the latter half of the 19th Century. I don't know why he was weighing in on the possible existence of Æther except that people sometimes want to know what powerful politicians think. This guy seemed pretty smart if absolutely a model of conservative British politics. My favorite bit about him was his credo: "Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible." Being the leader of the greatest imperial country of the 19th Century, this motto did not stop him from winding up with the most territory in the Scramble for Africa. I suppose that was more a case of the worst happening and less a case of as little should happen as possible. Because, you know, Britain could have sat out plundering Africa with the other imperialists, could they have not?
"a noun for the verb 'to undulate.'"
I don't know if he really said this or this is just Pynchon fictionalizing some possible dialogues surrounding Æther at the time but it definitely sounds good! The main reason for Æther's existence was to give light waves something to travel, or undulate, through. The movement of light waves simply needed a medium, or noun, to make sense.
Some don't believe in it, some do, neither will convince the other, it's all faith at the moment.
**********
Think about science as theories based on observations and we can understand the kind of "faith" Heino means. If early "scientists" (just meaning curious people who actually consider the world around them rather than horny people just trying to get laid (which we need too! I'm not judging!)) were to first observe fish, and the only thing they knew was that they, and most animals they knew of, would drown underwater, they would probably come up with a story, or theory, as to how the fish survives. Religion is theory based on observation without evidence. That's where faith actually lies. Science is theory based on the current best understanding of what's being observed and which everybody knows is liable to change with new evidence. That's hardly faith! But back to the fish watchers! A theory one of the early scientists might come up with is that fish don't need to breathe. They're just different. Everybody might nod their heads and say, "Yeah, yeah! That sounds reasonable. They seem fine underwater yet no animals we know of can breathe underwater. Therefore fish don't breathe." Belief in that story would be Heino's version of faith. It makes sense through observation and an understanding of the world around them. But as soon as somebody takes a fish out of the water and sees the way it gasps and eventually dies, the theory would immediately change. Obviously the fish is trying to breathe! But it drowns on land the way people drown underwater! So they do breathe but they seemingly breathe water. Boom. That's the new story that some will believe, some won't, and nobody will convince the other because the evidence to support either assertion isn't in yet. It's all faith.
"You're quite right, of course, the Æther has always been a religious question.
**********
"a religious question"
I suppose all scientific theory must be born from faith or we would ultimately learn nothing. If we only believe what we see evidence of without somebody extrapolating further on their observations, then nobody would ever come up with theories to test. At what point does a scientific theory go from the religious to the scientific? It seems to me what's most religious in the arena of science is when the evidence has stacked up against a long-held theory and yet adherents continue to cling to it.
Here Heino agrees with Merle that Æther has been a religious question because it has merely been theorized as something needed to uphold scientists' views on light and its properties. Kind of like how String Theory's multiple dimensions haven't been proved in any actual way but are only theorized because of the math. Or maybe dark matter is a closer comparison, pretty much being the modern day equivalent of Æther in that it seems to be needed for the current model of the universe and general relativity to work.
They strolled among the elm-shadows, eating sandwiches and apples out of paper bags, "a peripatetic picnic," as the Professor called it, slipping thereupon into his lecture-hall style.
**********
"elm-shadows"
Elm trees create plenty of shade and are one of the most popular trees to be used in public landscaping, often planted as boundary markers for paths, creating tunnel-like effects when planted to either side of a path. The elm is both a symbol of pastoral peace and death. Perhaps Heino and Merle are walking in the shadows of these border trees because they are, technologically speaking, crossing from a time of pastoral peace, where technology has begun to make impacts in our lives and seen as improving them, toward a time when technology will begin its decent from the peak of improvement, hurtling toward the ground as it becomes destructive and deadly, until it finally crashes beyond the zero into nuclear annihilation.
Or maybe its just a bit of descriptive tat.
"eating sandwiches and apples"
Apples being the symbolic fruit of which Eve partook. Yeah, I know the fruit is never actually described but instead of being a pedantic nerd on the Internet, how about understanding the cultural symbols all around you. There's a reason the Apple logo is that of an apple with one bite taken out of it. And it's not because it's the mark of the beast and an indication of man's inability to resist temptation! It's about gaining knowledge! Maybe those are the same things though. See my comments on "elm-shadows."
"out of paper bags"
They didn't have plastic bags yet! If you want to learn more about the history of plastics, Pynchon covers that topic in Gravity's Rainbow.
"a peripatetic picnic"
This is a pun. The Professor is commenting on how the picnic is a traveling picnic but also it's a picnic where they discuss philosophical matters as they eat. So peripatetic as the adjective in that they're traveling but also as in The Peripatetic school founded by Aristotle, as we see Heino begins to lecture Merle as they walk.
"Guess I'd better go take a look. Probably that gear train again."
**********
The guy just came out with singed hair and smelling of burning flesh and cleaning products. I don't think it was the gear train. I think the Professor decided to try holding the Leyden Jar in his non-cranking hand. He may also have been re-attempting the "What happens if the jar is down my pants?" experiment. Maybe he was rubbing the glass spheres against his scrotum to generate the static electricity? Am I projecting too many of my own kinks onto the Professor? Although his name is Heino Vanderjuice. There's got to be a semen joke in their somewhere.
Maybe the more important part of Merle's response is for the reader to understand that Merle has the know-how to build and fix an electrostatic generator!
"Small confrontation with the Töpler Influence Machine, nothing to worry about."
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"Töpler Influence Machine"
An electrostatic generator which means a machine to generate static electricity! It was probably used for hilarious practical jokes and Jackass-style stunts. It's almost certain that August Töpler was the first guy in history to know what it felt like to shock your scrotum. Or, more probably, his lab assistant was the first and Töpler was the first person in history to piss himself laughing at seeing a guy get his balls electrocuted.
I am, of course, joking. Static generators were invented well over a century earlier and, as such, many, many balls had been shocked before Töpler was even born.
He discussed it one day with his friend at Yale, Professor Vanderjuice, who, having just emerged from another of the laboratory mishaps for which he was widely known, carried as always a smell of sal ammoniac and singed hair.
**********
Pynchon never fears going full trope at times. He uses the entirety of language at his disposal and a good portion of the language we share are pop culture tropes and characters. The literate dog aboard the Inconvenience is based on Scrappy Doo, for Christ's sake! And here we see Professor Vanderjuice as that bumbling, absent-minded professorial-type whose massive intelligence and passion for new discoveries can get him into dangerous situations, like always blowing up the lab he's in and coming out smoking with wild hair and big black holes burned into his lab coat. He's a cartoon (to me, he's Professor Pat Pending from The Wacky Races)! But being a cartoon, he's capable of more than real people and, as such, he's actually built a perpetual motion machine for the Chums of Chance (an invention his peers scoffed at, not because they didn't believe he built it but because the thing he built was impossible and thus deserved academic scorn).
One of the themes I feel Pynchon crafting in this book is that what we believe as human beings shapes the world in which we live. Like a cartoon coyote running on air off a cliff, we craft reality and reality only shifts or changes, causing us to plummet, when we finally observe some truth which causes us to give up our old beliefs. So the Frontier was more about what we believed it to be, and declaring its death once again changed the landscape of the West. Believing that light needed Æther to travel through meant the world was full of Æther and its strange lighting effects were seen by balloonists up until scientists could prove Æther didn't exist (which they haven't proven yet by 1893! But they have experiments which have failed to prove its existence where they should have, and thus it is on its way out). Later, we'll see the Chums of Chance travel through a hollow Earth, something we know isn't possible but lived on in theory and belief during their century.
Vanderjuice might be a ridiculous human being but that only means he's capable of accomplishing ridiculous scientific feats.
And anything that happened at the speed of light would have too many unknowables attached to begin with—closer to religion than science.
**********
"closer to religion than science"
This sounds like some of that "common sense" pablum. You know, when some dolt says, "He may be smart but he doesn't have any common sense," to make them feel superior to the smart person. But common sense is stupid. It's observation without scientific backing! It's making assumptions about the world based on basic perceptions! Common sense says that the sun revolves around the Earth. Because you can see the sun moving across the sky. That's common sense. Science is all, "Yes, that is what it looks like! Good perception! But I'm about to blow your mind, baby!" "Common sense" is closer to religion than science ever could be!
People also love to point out that people who believe in science have faith just like a religious person. They have faith in their theories and whatnot. But obviously that's about as insipid an opinion as somebody could vocalize! Scientific theorems are based on evidence while the main attribute of faith is that it cannot have any evidence to support it. If there's evidence to support a conclusion, there is no room for faith. So shut up with your faith-based arguments against science, stupid people!
Although, really, I get what Merle is getting at. Science always seems to have an event horizon which we can't imagine ever truly being able to understand. In the 1880s, the speed of light must have been bewildering! But they had already developed experiments to begin working with light and methods with which to measure it and observe how it might change based on other variables (the whole point of the Michelson-Morley experiment). I think about this limit in terms of The Big Bang. I can't imagine how it could ever be knowable what was happening on the other side. I don't see theorizing about it as being close to religion though. But then I've been areligious my entire life and so I'm not too fazed by unknowables. Let them be unknowable! I've got turnips to buy!
Exists, doesn't exist, what's it got to do with the price of turnips basically.
**********
"Exists, doesn't exist"
Whether something exists or doesn't exist would seem really important when you get right down to it. But Merle acts rather casually about it and I get it. I once dropped out of a philosophy class in college because my attitude was pretty much this. It felt like everybody in class just believed philosophy was throwing up a new roadblock to anybody else's suggestion on whatever subject was being discussed. It was fucking tiresome. I was just kind of like, "Fine, y'all argue about whether or not what we see is real. I'm going to go get laid. Maybe that won't be real but, man, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of whatever it is!"
"price of turnips"
I guess at some point in Irish history, turnips were so important that if you tried to talk about anything else, people would say, "The head on you and the price of turnips," meaning, well, I don't fucking know what it means. But I guess the price of turnips (and the price of cabbages) was meant to represent some fact that actually matters to the lives of everyday people who don't have the time or luxury to mess with all of this universal hoodoo about natural physical laws and whatnot. So Merle is just pointing out that whether or not Æther exists doesn't mean much to the lives of most people.
He had already heard in some dim way about the Æther, though being more on the practical side of things, he couldn't see much use for it.
**********
"being more on the practical side of things"
At this point in Merle's life, when he's living in Connecticut, he's building machines for Heino Vanderjuice. Later he'll take up an interest in photography, possibly because he's interested in the physical aspects of the machine and how it works at first but later, he becomes quite invested in how many boobies he can see using it. What I mean to say is he's a man of the physical and of what can be seen. Theoretical concepts may as well be magical chants or religious rites. Maybe! I'm projecting and assuming here, I'm sure.
"he couldn't see much use for it"
I think this is a joke! At the time, Æther was supposedly what allowed light to get from one place to another. And without light, you can't see. So not being able to see much use for the thing that enables you to see would, to my mind, be a pretty good joke! Good one, Pynchon!
One day Merle had read in the Hartford Courant about a couple of professors at the Case Institute in Cleveland who were planning an experiment to see what effect, if any, the motion of the Earth had on the speed of light through the luminiferous Æther.
**********
"Hartford Courant"
This Connecticut newspaper is apparently the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, beginning its life as the Connecticut Courant in 1764. Merle would have been a reader of this paper as we learned, from his association with Heino Vanderjuice, he was a Connecticut resident. Merle, interested in light and photography, had a mechanical aptitude which he used to help build machines for Professor Vanderjuice back at Yale.
"a couple of professors at the Case Institute in Cleveland"
Physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley. The Case Institute wasn't actually known as the Case Institute of Technology until 1947. At the time, it would have been the Case School of Applied Science. But don't be too hard on Pynchon about that. It's not like I would have known any better if I didn't have the Internet to help me understand every single reference Pynchon makes.
"were planning an experiment"
The experiment described in this passage took place between April and July of 1887.
"to see what effect, if any, the motion of the Earth had on the speed of light through the luminiferous Æther"
This experiment is just one of the major changes happening around the liminal space of 1890. Being that Against the Day is one of Pynchon's four great novels he had within him (the others being Mason & Dixon, Gravity's Rainbow, and, well, um, I don't know. Has he done the fourth?! Are the three I named even three of the four?! You'd think I'd do some outside research on shit like this), it takes place at a pivotal place in history (especially the history of Western Civilization, or at least through its perspective, and particularly the American perspective), science, economics, and any other academic subject you can think of.
While meant to determine motions effect on the speed of light, what the experiment actually presented was strong evidence that Æther didn't exist. So we have the world before 1887 where science simply took for granted that a substance or medium must exist within vacuums and all around us that enables light waves to pass through (as waves through water or sound through air/water), dubbing the mystery substance Æther, and the time after where an entirely new understanding of what light might be and how it works was needed. So just as the Frontier was disappearing, changing the entire landscape of America and our relationship with it and each other, Æther was disappearing as well, turning the physics of light on its head.
Reading about the failed experiment reminds one of reading Gravity's Rainbow due to all the talk of sine waves and zeroes. I don't think they ever mention beyond the zero though! But beyond this experiment, which was pretty much the nail in the coffin for ether (both physicists themselves ceasing their experimentation into the nature of Æther and concentrating instead on light's properties) and opened up the scientific world for accepting the idea of special relativity. Whatever that is, amirite?! I think that just means light doesn't go faster if a train turns on its headlights because it just phase shifts to red or something (unless it's blue!).
Which usually was how Dally got to hear about her mother, in these bits and pieces.
**********
I suppose this is fitting, being that her name is Dally. She learns about her mother slowly through Merle's aimless wandering thoughts, mostly focused on his sexual dalliances with her. I'm guessing that's the case because of the whole "she was going to find out in a minute and half anyway" bit of his story. So, yes, I'm making assumptions based on my immaturity.
"bits and pieces"
Glue! I need glue!
"What was I doing in Cleveland in the first place?"
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I'm used to Pynchon collapsing scenes by shifting through time and space abruptly without letting the reader know. But I don't remember his characters basically doing the same thing within one dialogue. Maybe this is how conversations with astute and intelligent five year old kids often go. Feels more like Ann Nocenti dialogue in a DC Comic book than Thomas Pynchon! I'm used to her characters not actually listening to each other while talking past them, basically engaging in two monologues instead of one dialogue.
I suppose the point is that Dally, from the time she could talk, was constantly asking questions about her mother and Merle told her whatever he could manage to tell her at the time. And this mini-conversation allows Pynchon to steer the story to that place in time in Cleveland where Merle met Erlys. I'm glad I don't have to blame the conversation being terrible on Pynchon's writing because one of the two people talking is just a little kid and how much sense do they typically make? And Merle is still rattled from his broken heart so we should excuse his inability to answer a direct question from a toddler.
Anyway, we're going to learn why Merle was in Cleveland soon! Is that something we were dying to know? If not, we are now, right?!
"And . . ."
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I don't know what information Dally is trying to prompt from Merle after his last bit of dialogue with this "please continue" moment. Fortunately I don't feel all that stupid because Merle's response shows Merle has no idea either.
"Figured there was no point trying to hide it. Minute and a half longer, she'd've figured it out anyway."
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"Minute and a half longer, she'd've figured it out anyway"
Were they having sex when they first saw each other?
This entire conversation makes no sense. Perhaps this did happen when Dally was five because she has no idea that Merle has no idea how to answer questions.
"What attracted you to her?"
"Oh, well, she didn't run away when I told her I was attracted to her."
"So it was love at first she didn't reject you when you said you were attracted to her for not rejecting you?"
"Well, she was going to figure it out soon enough since I was going to tell her that I was attracted to her to find out if I was attracted to her by her reaction to me telling her I was attracted to her."
Don't worry! There are just two lines left in the conversation and it doesn't get any better!
"Love at first sight, something like that?"
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Never fall in love with somebody who falls in love at first sight unless they promise never to look at anybody else ever again in their lifetime, especially a mysterious mesmerist. Luckily, the kind of people who believe in love at first sight probably also believe in soulmates and so never even consider that a person who falls in love at first sight might be a dangerous kind of person to expect to remain in a monogamous relationship.
"Didn't run away screaming when I told her how I felt."
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This is a terrible answer to "what first attracted you to her" because Merle already felt something which led him to tell her about it. What caused him to feel that way was what Dally wanted to know. Also, this is a terrible answer because it reminds us how she eventually did run away, possibly while screaming. Two acceptable answers would have been her boobs or her butt. Oh! I just thought of a third: her baby maker! That's all I'm going to list because you wouldn't like how many options I would go through before getting to intelligence or personality. I mean, because those are so obvious! Why would I need to state them?! Duh!
"And, so, what first attracted you to her?"
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Dally asking sophisticated questions when she first learned to talk! This is probably an example of Dally in her later years asking questions. I'm not that terrible at reading comprehension. Pynchon just wanted me to know that Dally has been curious from the start. And why wouldn't she be curious about her missing mother?! What kind of mother leaves their child? And don't think I'm letting fathers off the hook, as if it's somehow acceptable for them to leave their children too! Fuck those guys! Especially that one! You know that one. Not personally, probably, but if you think about it a bit, you can probably figure out which father I'm talking about being that this is me writing that sentiment and you can probably assume that I know one in particular.
Since about the minute she could talk, Dally had been good for all kinds of interesting questions.
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"Dally"
Oh yeah! That's why Erlys's name is constantly in the discourse! Because of her and Merle's child Dally! I completely forgot about her! I guess she's constantly curious about her missing mother. Merle couldn't forget about Erlys if he wanted to, whether or not Dally was asking all kinds of interesting questions since, as was stated earlier, she looks so much like Erlys.
Her name was never far from the discourse of the day.
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That's because one of the defining characteristics of "day" is the light part of it. It's like the most important part of what distinguishes day from night. And, if you remember, Erlys means the light. Also maybe it's just that she haunted Merle's mind as he went about his day and he couldn't help thinking, all the time, how things might be different if she hadn't left. Basically, she's like a little miniature portrait hidden away in his brain which continues to turn up when Merle probably least expects it.
He woke up, understanding at once that the whole purpose of the dream was to remind him, with diabolical roundaboutness, of Erlys Mills.
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"diabolical roundaboutness"
Pynchon describes the way the dream works to get its point across in much the same way almost anybody would describe a book like Gravity's Rainbow. My first thought was, "That's an apt description of House of Leaves but then I remembered I'm reading Pynchon and Pynchon wrote that line and Pynchon most assuredly was saying in this moment to his readers, "You want to know what the point of my book is? Well, we'll get there! At least I've limited my books to several hundred to a thousand pages which all come out as one complete story. You want real diabolical roundaboutedness? Read Tristram Shandy!" Okay, Pynchon probably was most assuredly not saying all that.
Anyway, aside from the strict definition of diabolical which suggests terrible evil as opposed to the way I read Pynchon's use here as a sort of "evil genius," I'd say "diabolical roundaboutness" fits the way Pynchon gets to his points using great intelligence and whimsy. It's also probably why so many people find his books daunting! It's a good description of Pynchon's writing style.
"Erlys Mills"
Obviously the dream was going to be about Erlys and Merle's heartbreak since the paragraph began with how the dream took place not long after Erlys left him for Zombino.
