"Anybody feel like dancing?" offered Chevrolette.
* * * * * * * * * *
I wonder where Chevrolette left Chick and Darby? Probably passed out in some dark alley of the fair in their cum-stained trousers.
This is the last sentence of this scene in the Pump Room because Chevrolette can't handle listening to anymore of this dour garbage about the Professor from these two. So she changes the subject to something more exciting because the new subject involves possibly touching a woman.
Down in the elegant Pump Room, Ray ran into Merle Rideout and Chevrolette McAdoo, who were "out on the town," owing to a fortunate wager Merle had made earlier that day.
* * * * * * * * * *
In this bit, we see Ray move downward, both physically and socially, in the hotel. He has left the penthouse where the rich and entitled meet and moved about as far down as possible on every scale, metaphorical and physical, to arrive at the "Pump Room" with burlesque dancer Chevrolette and cuckolded raunchy Merle. Sure, the Pump Room might be elegant but if it lets in riff-raff like this, how exclusive a location can it actually be?
"a fortunate wager"
Gambling, of course, is practically the only way for a lower class American to garner enough wealth to even have a taste of a higher class life. It's the only economic movement realistically available to them because those running gambling rings understand the odds and they understand the habits of people desperate for better circumstances. So a few win while most lose. So what? They'll just blow it on some luxury to make their terribly hard lives somewhat better for a brief moment and then it'll be back to gambling. They have no recourse to making money through investment because all of the games are rigged to make more money for those who already have enough money and have gained power through their money. Better to have a nice night out than to have your money stolen by rich solicitors and financiers pretending to care about your investments.
Also, I wonder what the fortunate wager was?! Maybe we'll find out in a "Merle Section."
"Come on, boys," Chevrolette McAdoo gesturing with a cigarette in a rhinestone-encrusted holder, "I'm headed in for work now, I can show you backstage at the South Seas, too."
* * * * * * * * * *
Dancing is art. Nobody is denying that dancing is art. But I'll tell you two things heterosexual teenaged boys generally aren't interested in: dancing and art. Heterosexual teenaged boys are, however, extremely interested in the female form. Oh, I also don't want to erase heterosexual adult males (haven't they been erased too much from history already is a sarcastic thing that didn't need to be said): they, too, are extremely interested in the female form. For example, Merle Rideout taking nude photos of Chevrolette McAdoo earlier.
I'm trying, and failing, to begin some form of intelligent discussion about stripping. Maybe something that tries to explain the vast chasm between auteur and audience. Perhaps delving into the intent of an artist to put their skills and love of a subject into their intent to display it to a wider audience, to maybe formulate a love for it as well and how an audience doesn't experience any of this content because of boobies. I could try to write something deeply moving, showing greater understanding of women's bodies as the center of a style of artistic expression being completely lost on an audience that just wants to get laid. But I don't have the empathy or sympathy or understanding or intelligence or emotional depth to do anything of the sort. Maybe you should instead go read Dave Sim's "Jaka's Story," a surprisingly nuanced look at a young woman thriving in her love for the art of dance and how she's simply defined, by everybody outside her world ("her world" being a hidden, unused room in a vast mansion, perhaps a little heavy on the symbolism but it works), by her youth and beauty. I say "surprising" because 95% of the people you ask about Dave Sim will say, "Who is Dave Sim?" But 95% of the 5% who know who Dave Sim is will tell you that he's a misogynist. I might not say that (I also might say it!) but I also wouldn't declare he isn't. He's definitely anti-feminist and his self-declared major breakthrough on his understanding of women was when he was interviewing mothers and daughters for his Cerebus story "Mothers & Daughters," and he discovered that speaking with a woman that he wasn't attracted to and who he didn't want to fuck actually enabled him to listen to them and he decided they had nothing important or interesting to say. So apparently Dave Sim is one of those people who tells stories that they think are about one thing and never realize that the story is actually about themselves. Because, I mean, if declaring that women have nothing interesting to say and the only reason to talk with them is that you think you might have an opportunity to fuck them isn't misogyny, I think I might need a new dictionary.
"Jaka's Story" came before "Mothers & Daughters" which might be why it feels empathic and powerful. I guess Dave had yet to realize that he saw women as barely sentient fleshlights. His treatment of Jaka afterward certainly speaks to his self-professed realization though. She ruins Cerebus's life (possibly being the main temptation sending him to Hell after his death). She ruins Rick's life (due to getting an abortion without his knowledge). She ruins Pud Wither's life (by illegally dancing in his tavern (look, she was stripping but she still couldn't see that chasm between artist and audience)). She ruins Astoria's life (although that wasn't her fault; she was just a young girl manipulated by Lord Julius to get back at his ex-wife). For the main female character in the entirety of Cerebus, Dave Sim treats her awfully, laying the blame for many horrors at her feet due to her selfish and small-minded behavior.
Dave Sim may think he chose celibacy but, let's face it: celibacy chose him.
Did that make sense? Was that a clever burn?
What I set out to say was that everybody should make friends with a stripper because backstage opportunities!
"gesturing with a cigarette in a rhinestone-encrusted holder"
Pretty sure this is a phallic symbol (cigarette) in a yonic symbol (rhinestone-crusted holder).
Chevrolette managed to mollify even Lindsay by borrowing his "skimmer" and holding it coyly in front of their faces, as if to conceal a furtive kiss, while the frolicsome Darby Suckling, without whose spirited "clowning" no group snapshot would have been complete, threatened the pair with a baseball bat and a comical expression meant to convey his ingenuous notion of jealous rage.
* * * * * * * * * *
"Chevrolette managed to mollify even Lindsay by borrowing his "skimmer" and holding it coyly in front of their faces, as if to conceal a furtive kiss"
"Well, I guess if an attractive woman is going to flirt with me, I can forget about this man selling his daughter into an almost certainly loveless future marriage with a boy I think of as a despicable and lazy human being" is something Lindsay probably thought being that it's the same thought any teenaged virgin boy would have had. An attractive woman suddenly flirting with you can make you forget even the most immediate and over-the-top human rights violations! "I can't believe those police are beating those protest . . . did Sherry just playfully touch my leg and rub her boob on my arm?!"
"the frolicsome Darby Suckling, without whose spirited "clowning" no group snapshot would have been complete"
Wait until the joy and wonder of life has been sucked completely out of Darby Suckling and we'll see how great group photographs become! We all know, especially with somebody like Lindsay hanging about sucking the joy out of everything like marrow from a bone, that Lindsay's frolicsome attitude isn't going to hold up too long into his teen years. Group photos will quickly go from everybody laughing at Darby "clowning" around to everybody looking awkward and slightly scared of the scowling teenager with the dark eyeliner, ripped jacket, fingerless leather gloves, and the uncombed jet-black dyed hair. You might be thinking, "Hey, Grunion Guy, don't you think Chick Counterfly would be a more obvious peer who will cause this turn in Darby's personality?" and I say, "Did you not grow up around adults, you traitor?!" Your peers and friends definitely have say in the things you like or the fashion you wear but they're never the ones who destroy your sense of wonder and joy for living! That's on the fucking adults in the room!
"threatened the pair with a baseball bat"
I guess Darby carries a baseball bat around with him like Harley Quinn?
Not pictured (or, you know, described) Randolph looking stupefied, Chick eyeballing Dahlia, and Miles Blundell falling on his face.
"Ha! D'ye hear that, Carrot-head? Thinks I'm your grandpa. Thank you, lad, but this here is my daughter Dahlia, I'm proud to say. Her mother, alas—"
* * * * * * * * * *
I figured Merle Rideout's companion, Chevrolette McAdoo, was Irish but I really didn't have any idea what kind of a surname "Rideout" was. But here he uses "ye" and his daughter has flaming red hair (which we knew already! I'm just putting all the evidence in one place after finding the "ye" clue).
"my daughter Dahlia"
Maybe her mother was Scandinavian and chose the name Dahlia which means "Dahl's Flower" after some botanist named Dahl but then Dahl means dale so it might as well just mean the flower of the dale as well. It could also be from the Hebrew, Dalyah, which means "flowering branch." Those are fairly similar so we'll just assume either of these meanings can be interpreted the same way: she's a kind of flower which suggests she thrives in sunlight and out in the open and is pretty and smells good.
A third possible origin of Dahlia's name is Dalia, the goddess of fate from Baltic mythology. This is my favorite possibility because Dalia oversees the proper distribution of material wealth. Maybe it doesn't add up because of the different spelling and because the popularity of the spelling "Dalia" only came about in the late 20th century. But it fits the themes of this book which was published in 2006 so maybe Pynchon was influenced by the popularity of this name in the previous decade. Whatever the case, she's named after somebody who would probably look down on America and think, "Blasphemers. Look at how they distribute wealth in that country. All wrong! I should smite them."
"Her mother, alas—"
Spoiler: she's not dead. That's not really much of a spoiler because the reader finds out she's not dead in just a few more sentences. It's only a spoiler if you're reading along with me one line at a time so you didn't automatically read the reveal almost instantaneously after reading the hint that she might be dead. I know she's not dead because I've actually read the entire first chapter of this book already. It seems like cheating but when I first started this blog, I thought, "Well, I'm not going to spend nine years actually reading this book for the first time one sentence at a time with constant interruptions by my own rambling brain. I'll just read ahead when I'm not willing to write." But then the smarter part of me said, "Bullshit. If you read ahead and finish this book while doing the blog, you'll never fucking finish the blog. You'd better stop reading, idiot." And since that was a suggestion from the smarter part of my brain, I stopped reading ahead.
"I am only an amateur, of course," Miles, though long a member of the prestigious International Academy of Ukulelists, said modestly, "and get lost now and then. But if I promised to go back to the tonic and wait, do you think they'd let me come and sit in?"
* * * * * * * * * *
I thought by saying "go back to the tonic," Miles was saying something like "I'll give up my vices to get back into proper playing shape." But apparently a "tonic" is some kind of music terminology dealing with the primary scale or something. I don't know music or music lingo at all. Trying to understand music theory, to me, is like trying to understand a foreign language if the person trying to understand it doesn't actually care about it at all and is super lazy.
It's weird that Miles is trying to land a guest gig with the band of a dancer at the Fair when he's already got a job flying around the world exploring strange new civilizations where no boy has gone before. Or maybe it's not weird? Is this how normal people engage in the world around them? They see an opportunity to take part in something they love to do and they simply ask a person involved if they can also be involved? Hunh. That makes sense! I suppose I managed to do this once or twice in my life. Like when I saw that guy selling LSD in the parking lot of The Grateful Dead concert and I simply went up to him and said, "I would like to buy some LSD too!" And also when I saw all those nerds playing Magic the Gathering in the back of the hobby store, I walked straight in and said, "I would like to participate in your nerd league posthaste!" I then complimented five of them on their fedoras and they were all, "Join us, good sir!" And I did!
"More of a medley, I believe, encompassing Hawaiian and Philippino motifs, and concluding with a very tasteful adaptation of Monsieur Saint-Saëns's wonderful 'Bacchanale,' as recently performed at the Paris Opera."
* * * * * * * * * *
This reads like a clue on how to read Gravity's Rainbow so that a reader might understand what's happening in the fourth part, "The Counterforce." But you have to replace "Hawaiian and Philippino motifs" with "German and British and American motifs" and replace "concluding with a very tasteful adaptation of Monsieur Saint-Saëns's wonderful 'Bacchanale'" with some other work which I can't name because I'm still having a lot of trouble with "The Counterforce." It might be something less high brow artsy and could simply be "concluding with a disgustingly lowbrow and hallucinogenic adaptation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's 'Action Comics #1.'" I mean, a guy is shoved into a rocket and launched away from a world that seemed to be ending.
"tasteful adaptation of Monsieur Saint-Saëns's wonderful 'Bacchanale,'"
I just listened to this piece and now I'm picturing Pynchon listening to it and thinking, "I could see a woman practically stripping to this!" The opening movement and a few other movements within are evocative of "The Streets of Cairo," also known as the Snake Charmer's song, which became synonymous with belly dancing or the hoochie coochie.
"And is it authentic native music?"
* * * * * * * * * *
What Miles is asking without knowing he's asking it because he's living in 1893 is, "Do you have native Hawaiians in your band or are you a cultural appropriating scum-bag?" Of course he would have been using the term "scum-bag" to mean "a bag used in the refining of sugar" and not in "a condom." Also people almost certainly weren't referring to other people as "scum-bags" in 1893. All of this is to say that this book was written in 2006 so Pynchon was probably hinting at the idea of whiteness appropriating foreign native arts and ideas as their own in the only way an 1893 kid could: being truly passionate about Hawaiian music and wanting to know if Miss McAdoo's band reproduced it authentically. This entire bit about ukuleles and a white woman dancing foreign dances is a continuation of Pynchon's examination of the Chicago World's Fair and how it treated non-white arts and cultures. They were things to be curious about and maybe admire on their own merits, divorced from the context of the culture which created them, because looking too deeply at the culture and the people and how these arts and creations came to the shores of the white men bring up too many questions with nearly only depressing answers.
"There are several ukulelists in my pit-band," said Miss McAdoo, "tenor, baritone, and soprano."
* * * * * * * * * *
I'm sorry but all of this talk about ukuleles has caused me to slit my wrists. I probably need medical attention. I hope neither the paramedics nor the ambulance driver are hipsters who can't stop themselves from taking their ukuleles to work but I am in Portland so there's only like a ten percent chance of that not happening.
"tenor, baritone, and soprano"
Thanks to Pynchon, I now know there are more variants of the ukulele than the standard soprano. It's possible somebody once tried to explain this to me but I simply heard them saying, "Blah blah blah blah blah." Like that Uber driver that one time I took Uber when my friend was in town and they had the ability to use a smart phone to coerce a person needing extra money to survive into being our designated driver and the guy's name was Brent and he had a ukulele in the car and he graciously invited us to play it if we wanted. Or maybe the barista at the local cafe who heard somebody say the word "ukulele" and then was all "Oh, you play too?" and, well, I can't tell you what was said after that because a high-pitched tonal note descended upon my skull for the next five minutes and my eyes went all white and cloudy and I might have gotten a message from a long dead ancestor. Or maybe somebody at my bank once mentioned it seeing as how their front window is covered in stickered words that are supposed to describe living in Portland and I'm pretty sure one of those words is "ukulele."
"I perform the Dance of Lava-Lava, the Volcano Goddess," she replied.
* * * * * * * * * *
I guess I have to imagine what that dance might be. It's probably a version of the Hula but with more audience casualties.
That was my polite society definition of the dance. My vulgar interpretation uses words like "eruptions" and "ruined" and "pants."
"You are an artiste, Miss McAdoo?"
* * * * * * * * * *
This is a thing writers do that I think should be done more often but constantly frustrates me: they don't attribute a line of dialogue to any speaker. Usually they do it because it should be obvious and nobody wants to read same speaking attribution over and over again. Sometimes they do it because they're Gertrude Stein and they just don't give a fuck. If I had to guess who was saying this, I'd say it was Chick Counterfly because he's the one who engaged with Merle and Chevrolette. But all the Chums of Chance are in the scene! This sounds like something Lindsay would say with a hint of disgust and judgment in his voice. Or it could be Randolph trying to change the tone a bit by lifting the discussion of Miss McAdoo's dancing from vulgar to cultural. But it's probably just Chick continuing to slather on the flattery.
"artiste"
You're an artist without an 'e' if you engage in activities that can be discussed in polite society. You're an artist with an 'e' if you're practically naked while doing your art. I'm pretty sure that's the standard definition. Comments for this post are turned off.
"Makes Little Egypt look like a church lady."
* * * * * * * * * *
"And you haven't seen the turn she does down to that South Seas Pavilion yet," declared Merle Rideout gallantly.
* * * * * * * * * *
Is it really gallant to say, "And you should see her shimmy with less clothes on!"
Hmm, probably!
"Nice put-together," Chick nodded admiringly.
* * * * * * * * * *
Chick is the only member of the Chums of Chance willing to compliment Miss McAdoo. Perhaps it's an uncouth attempt at flattery but does that matter? It's a compliment in an appropriate situation. It's brave, actually! He's putting himself out there! Is he being honest based on his previous description of Chevrolette's style of sleeves as balloons? Or is he just thinking, "This woman was running about naked so I need to get on her good side!"?
Fully attired, she seemed to have just stepped out of a ladies' magazine, her ensemble this forenoon right at the vanguard of summer fashion, the current revival of the leg-of-mutton sleeve having resulted in a profusion of shirtwaists with translucent shoulders "big as balloons, all over town"—as Chick Counterfly, a devoted observer of the female form, would express it—in Miss McAdoo's case, saturated in a vivid magenta, and accompanied by a long ostrich-feather boa dyed the same shade. And her hat, roguishly atilt, egret plumes swooping each time she moved her head, would have charmed even the most zealous of conservationist bird-lovers.
* * * * * * * * * *
I'm keeping these two sentences together to keep the description of Miss McAdoo's clothing in one entry.
"Fully attired, she seemed to have just stepped out of a ladies' magazine"
The "fully attired" part means it's no ladies' magazine I've ever read!
I'm not much on discussing fashion so I don't have a lot to say here. I've given the description of Chevrolette to the Non-Certified Spouse so hopefully she'll draw her interpretation of it and I'll add it to this post as an update.
"vivid magenta"
I sort of stalled in my immediate re-reading of Gravity's Rainbow but I will get back to it soonish. I mention that here because "magenta and green" was a recurring color pattern in that novel which I have yet to get a handle on. I'm hoping I'll discover something during my second reading. I was surprised when I read "magenta" here and Pynchon didn't follow it up with some green article of clothing.
One strange aspect of Pynchon's writing is how he'll fill a description with intricate details concerning one or two aspects of the scene but then he'll leave out a whole lot more. So here we get some solid details on Miss McAdoo's sleeves and the feathers on her hat. But we don't get a description of the clothing attached to the sleeves or the hat attached to the feathers. By describing scenes this way, Pynchon asks the reader to focus on specific aspects of his story which must mean something, right?!
Why would we be asked to think about her sleeves only? I guess because they remind Chick of balloons and the Chums of Chance ride in a balloon? Maybe it's as if the women are observers floating about the city on balloon sleeves! And the feathers in the hat remind the reader of birds and birds fly! So Pynchon is removing all the detail from the woman's dress except that which reminds the reader of flight. Except for the ostrich boa which is a reminder of the exact opposite: a bird that can't fly. But even a suggestion of non-flight suggests flight in the way any mention of one thing automatically suggests the opposite.
"would have charmed even the most zealous of conservationist bird-lovers"
There's hyperbole and then there's just plain old ridiculousness, Pynchon! No wait! Hyperbole is the act of making a statement hyper-ridiculous. We understand how charming Miss McAdoo looks in her feathered hat purely because Pynchon expresses the unbelievable statement that avian conservationists would accept the destruction of birds because she wears this feathered hat so well.
I hope I used the adjective "avian" correctly in the previous paragraph because I meant to say a conservationist who was concerned with saving birds and not a conservationist who was themselves a bird.
The young woman directed a graceful kick which was not, however, altogether lacking in affection, and said, "I'm Chevrolette McAdoo, and mighty pleased to meet you fellows, even if you did nearly sandbag us into the beyond yesterday."
* * * * * * * * * *
Hopefully everybody has been lucky enough to be kicked flirtatiously by a young woman at some point in their lives, even if the woman's name is as crazy as Chevrolette McAdoo. If one were to translate the young woman's name from French and Irish to English, it would be something like "Little Goat Black Hound." 'McAdoo' is the anglicized spelling of the Irish 'Mac Conduibh.' It probably makes sense if you were some non-Irish guy asking for the Irish person's name and then scribbled down, to the best of your English or American ears, what you thought you had heard. Other ways 'Mac Conduibh' was anglicized: 'Cunniff' or 'McNiff.' So it really depended on how thick the accent was and how thick the non-Irish person recording the name they just heard.
Chevrolette is just a cute way to say Ms. McAdoo is horny like a little goat, I suspect. She definitely kicks like one. But why a black hound? Hounds are known for sniffing out rabbits. They were also known for crying all of the time and not being a good friend and also not catching rabbits, I guess? Maybe Elvis just didn't understand how to do metaphors.
You know what? Forget Elvis's description. He obviously didn't know anything about hound dogs. He's just all, "You cry all the time like a baying hound dog but my metaphor falls apart in all of the other ways which I should point out in the rest of the lyrics of this song."
I'm sure I'll find out why she's such a hound dog later!
"You bean-brain."
* * * * * * * * * *
When you can't think of some piece of knowledge which you know you know, it's called a "brain fart." "Bean-brain" is just the polite, Victorian era version of the same thing. Because, like every toddler knows, beans make you fart.
How Pynchon knew that "bean-brain" was the Victorian era "brain fart" is all the proof I need that Pynchon is a time traveler and he writes all of his novels in the era where they're set. That's much easier for me to believe than imagining somebody actually does loads of research for their novel.
No Victorian era lady would ever utter the word "fart." They probably pretended not to even know what a fart was although I bet they just filled the room with flatulence the moment they loosened up the corset. I bet undoing the tie on a corset just unleashed a torrent of loud farts as they were finally able to rush to freedom. Or maybe women simply died whenever they got gas because their stomachs couldn't expand. At least then they didn't have to be embarrassed when their body finally let one loose, I suppose.
"And my fair companion here is . . . give me a minute—"
* * * * * * * * * *
Some spirit messenger Blackbird Rideout turns out to be. He can't even remember the name of the naked lady he was photographing. Of course now that I remember she was naked, I completely understand. The subtext of this is probably something like the patriarchy can't even bother to acknowledge the agency of women or realize that they are individuals in their own right.
Although you'll be more sympathetic to Merle's inability to remember her name once you learn what her wackydoodle name actually is.
"my fair companion"
Get it? It's a play on words! She's nice to look at and also she has accompanied him to the Fair!
Strolling among the skyships next morning, beneath a circus sky which was slowly becoming crowded as craft of all sorts made their ascents, renewing acquaintance with many in whose company, for better or worse, they had shared adventures, the Chums were approached by a couple whom they were not slow to recognize as the same photographer and model they had inadvertently bombarded the previous evening.
* * * * * * * * * *
Miles and Lindsay's night at the Fair came to a conclusion between sections which means Pynchon wasn't interested at all in describing the events and exhibitions taking place in The White City at the center of the fairgrounds. The center isn't of concern here. Perhaps I'm getting a little bit closer at understanding the title. Perhaps the day is the center, the status quo, the considered norm. What we see in the day is what the light shines on, and what the light shines on, in a civilization, is curated by desires, beliefs, agendas, motivations, and selfish machinations of the people living in it. But that doesn't mean what happens in the shadows doesn't exist, or isn't important, or isn't equally as valid to those who live outside of that light.
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." The quote by Thelonious Monk which opened the novel. "It's always night." An observation by a man who lived in the shadow world, not because he chose to but because society chose it for him. And even when he thrived, they continued to try to stop him from thriving whenever a light was shone on him. His life mirrors every experience Black Americans have tried to explain to white Americans who just simply choose not to believe it. Because living in the daylight is an experience so divorced from those without light that it can hardly be comprehended. And much of the time, white Americans simply choose not to comprehend it when it's plain as day.
I'd be a fool to believe that I understand what this novel is about or where it's headed, thematically, after only reading twenty-five pages of boys' adventure novel. But what's the point of having a brain if you don't use it to think about what you're reading while you're reading it?
"the Chums"
Why "the Chums of Chance"? I haven't asked that question yet, have I? For a group of uniformed boys working by strict rules within a seemingly militaryesque organization, why identify with the word "chance"? Chance could mean "the occurrence and development of events in the absence of any obvious design." What does that say about their view of their 19th century world? We're throwing God right out of the picture with this nickname, are we not? I know they're using it to mean "do something despite its being dangerous or of uncertain outcome." But we have to acknowledge that Pynchon knows the alternate meanings of the word and what they, too, suggest about their name. So if the term chance suggests an "absence of any obvious design" as well as engaging in dangerous activities with uncertain outcomes, it's part of the text and part of the story.
I think the "obvious" is doing most of the work in this case. God has been the "obvious" designer up until, well, about 1893, if I'm going to go all-in on Pynchon's story and themes. The Chums are living in an era where the "designs" are being discovered little by little and they've been discovered to be obvious in no way at all. That's the thing about science. People who don't really care much about learning and understanding the world around them, so wrapped up in their own gut instincts and personal anecdotes, always seem to think the world can be understood if you just have a modicum of common sense. But common sense implies obviousness; common sense allows for easy understanding of simple things and matters. Science is neither simple nor easily understood. Science often goes against everything our senses say the world should be. In a way, I see the phrase "absence of any obvious design" as a statement that puts God to rest and embraces science.
"approached by a couple"
It's been three sections of mostly the Chums so I'm looking forward to some new characters! Especially the naked lady!
The duo appeared to be making for a nearby patch of woods, now and then casting apprehensive looks upward at the enormous gasbag of the descending Inconvenience, quite as if it were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure.
* * * * * * * * * *
It's lines like these that make me want to immediately re-read Mason & Dixon. But I must resist because I don't even have time for the all the projects I'm currently working on. Why must we eat and sleep? I could get so much more done! Or I'd just play more Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures. I'm currently working my way through The Temple of Elemental Evil.
I find it interesting (or informative?) that Pynchon conflates the airship with Society's shaming view, as if it were merely watching and judging, and yet this Society's judging eyeball also just dropped a bunch of sandbags on the couple, nearly killing them. It certainly puts the meaning behind Pynchon's phrase of "a spirit of constructive censure" into stark and scary relief, doesn't it?
The couple in this scene seem like wild animals, or proto-humans, running back to the wood in instinctual fear of their lives from the man-made machine descending upon them. It suggests a division in mankind, as if a time traveler had traveled back to amaze pre-civilized man with his gadgets, or a modern era traveler somehow wound up in the far flung post-apocalyptic future where science has all but been forgotten. What that has to do with this book, I don't know! Probably something about how science and technology change our lives in such drastic ways that they produce both fear and fascination in equal amounts.
