Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 64: Line 167 (1149)

 Something was wrong with the faces.

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It's weird reading a paragraph by Thomas Pynchon that actually has multiple sentences. The usual way is multiple pages that just have one sentence. I'm exaggerating! But I still think he's creating this pace on purpose by using so many short sentences. He's slowing down the narration to mimic the time it takes for the photograph to appear on the clear plates. It's a process. It's discovery. None of that's meant to be fast or easy. And again, he's not just talking about developing photos. He's talking about reading. And not just reading but comprehension. The patience it takes to try to understand what the artist is trying to portray. And sometimes the faces are wrong. Not because of the fault of the writer; not because of the fault of the reader. It's the fault of a disconnect between the two, a mistake in communication. Sometimes what is being said is inverted by the reader because the writer thinks the reader will understand the subtlety, or the parody, the satire or the exaggeration. But the reader will take it literally. They will view the negative as the final work.

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 64: Line 166 (1148)

 Merle peered uneasily.

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Look, I really am doing this blog one line at a time. If I knew this line was next, I would have saved the unheimlich stuff for this entry! Just pretend you read it here and let's move on.

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 64: Line 165 (1147)

 It happened to be the Newburgh asylum, with two or three inmates standing in the foreground, staring.

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The picture that suddenly appears to Merle, the picture that he describes as "clearer than real", is of the place in Cleveland where reality is the least clear. Nobody can say what the two or three inmates were staring at when this photo was taken, and nobody can absolutely sure that they weren't staring back at Merle himself.
    What Merle is questioning with the development of these photographs how reality works and so the first picture he observes coming into being like magic, out of the pale Invisible, is of a place where reality is not only questioned but denied, disbelieved, unstable, un-understood.

What this sentence screams at me, in German, of course, is "unheimlich". It's uncanny. It's strange. It's a photo of the most un-home-like place you can be, a place that you must call home although you do not want to. Different from a prison in that the inmates, presumably, can not even know why they're here. And the inmates staring out from it makes them feel trapped, as they are in the photo. They are not looking back. They are not merely looking out. They are staring. They are longing. They are not home.