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?"
**********
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 . . ."
**********
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."
**********
"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?"
**********
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."
**********
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?"
**********
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.
**********
"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.
"—I could go age fifteen, I guess," Merle went on, twinkling directly at Lindsay Noseworth strangling with indignation, "but you'd have to pay in gold, and come fetch her on your own ticket. . . . But say now would you mind if I got a snap of you all in front of this Trouvé-screw unit over here?"
* * * * * * * * * *
Oh boy! Don't I have egg all over my face! I lambasted Lindsay Noseworth for not understanding Merle's joke about getting his daughter smashed on corn liquor and here I've been bamboozled into thinking Merle was serious about selling his daughter into sex slavery! Of course he's just being crude and crass and inappropriate for the chuckles! And also to make Lindsay's head explode, something Chick Counterfly would readily assist in. Boy do I feel like an ass! Mostly because Pynchon turned me into Lindsay Noseworth! My, my, that Pynchon is a clever guy!
But still . . . Pynchon presents the idea here because it's a thing which part of society was okay with and part of society was fighting against to make the world better for as many people as possible. Lindsay, being a lover of rules, at least seems to be a lover of rules for the betterment of society, even if he sometimes interprets "the betterment of society" in fairly shallow ways (like being against profanity). The only reason Lindsay can bristle and get angry at these comments is if this kind of attitude is fairly common among the masses. If people didn't treat their young daughters like chattel, Lindsay would quite obviously understand this as a joke. The "joke" here is less "ha ha, I'm treating my five year old girl in a wholly inappropriate and disgusting way" and more "ha ha look at that uptight jackass squirm while we say despicable things about my daughter!" Maybe some people can't appreciate the difference between those two intents. But I can!
"Trouvé-screw"
"Trouvé" is French for "found." So I don't know what this unit is supposed to look like. I guess like one of those drill units. It probably just looked like Leonardo's original design.
"Admiration noted—and you might examine little Dahlia here, who's the spit of her Ma, fulminate me if she ain't, fact if you're ramblin by some ten, twelve years hence, why ride on over, have another look, make an offer, no price too small or too insulting I wouldn't consider. Or if you're willing to wait, take an option now to buy, got her on special, today and tomorrow only, dollar ninety-eight takes her away, heartbreakin smile and all. Yehp—there, lookit, just like 'at. Throw you in an extra bonnet, I'm a reasonable sort, 'n' the minute she blows that sweet-sixteenth birthday candle out, why she's on them rails, express to wherever you be."
* * * * * * * * * *
"fulminate me if she ain't"
I just profess my ire that Pynchon isn't making my brain work too hard and then he brings fulmination into the picture! Yes, yes. Merle is using it here to mean "express vehement protest" (as Lindsay did early. Lindsay fulminated Merle). But "fulminate" is totally a Gravity's Rainbow word. Unless it's a later Against the Day word when we get to the chapter with the explosives. Fulminate salts are friction sensitive explosives. That's probably why the word means "vehement protest." Because the person is exploding in anger. Heck, maybe Merle is actually using fulminate to mean "blow me up if I'm lying!" It's 1893! People probably expected to be blown up if they ever wronged somebody.
"if you're ramblin by some ten, twelve years hence"
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
Because I refused to purchase a five year old girl as my future bride.
"make an offer, no price too small or too insulting"
Was it okay to sell your child in the late 1800s? I suppose children were more property than autonomous beings. I'm starting to suspect that Merle really does give Dally corn liquor on a regular basis. This guy is the definition of uncouth! And also maybe the definition of sex slaver!
"the minute she blows that sweet-sixteenth birthday candle out, why she's on them rails, express to wherever you be"
This reminds me of all the weird perverts who keep track of young actresses' birthdates so they can, um, legally say the perverse things in public that they've been saying in private for way too many years. I think the poor Olsen twins suffered from this nonsense quite a bit. I only mention the Olsen twins because it seemed so egregious. "You mean you can't wait to talk about fucking the baby from Full House? What is wrong with you?" is a conversation I never had but I'm sure many friends of pervs did. I only mention that I only mention the Olsen twins because I'm sure all young female actresses have to deal with this shit.
"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.
"A fine-looking little girl, sir," Randolph, brimming with avuncularity.
* * * * * * * * * *
I swear these first few sections focusing on the Chums of Chance are just Pynchon fucking with his readers. He's all, "Here you go! A story that reads like a regular old story with a regular old plot with regular old characters with funny names! Just 1000 pages of easy peasy lemon squeezy stuff like this! I learned my lesson with Gravity's Rainbow! I'm an easy read now!" Then after a few dozen pages . . . WHAM! Here's some shit about the physical qualities of light! Here's some tough mathematical concepts! Here's how photography changed the way we viewed the world in much the same way as the Gutenberg press!"
I don't really know about any of that but I suspect it's all coming! I can tell all of this regular plot is just lulling me into a false sense of security. Pretty soon I'll be walking right into the punji pit!
"brimming with avuncularity"
Yes, it's a weird statement to say a person is brimming with the attributes of an uncle. But Thomas Pynchon is a weird guy. I suppose I could just read it as brimming with kindness and generosity but Pynchon chooses his words with care! He wants us to picture Randolph as an uncle. He's a person of authority but not so much that you can't sass him and he'll mostly play along. Lindsay is the dad! Miles is the mom. Darby is the child. And Chick is the cool guy in the leather jacket who owns a motorcycle and lives upstairs where you can hear him banging chicks all day long.
How come that was never an episode of Happy Days? Where none of the Cunninghams can get any sleep because Fonzi is always fucking so loud?
"This cannot be," he muttered. "Small children hate me."
* * * * * * * * * *
It isn't just small children, Noseworthy.
Here's why small children hate Lindsay: he's a control freak. It's why he's the master-at-arms of the ship. He loves rules because he fears chaos. If all rules are being followed, nothing bad can transpire. And who are the worst, most chaotic creatures? Small children. So Lindsay almost certainly ruins all of the fun being had by any children in his vicinity by shutting down whatever game they're playing due to rules and regulations not permitting their gambits and gambols. But this kid has just met him so she's interested! Especially since he was acting like such a clown over Merle's alcohol joke.
Have I mentioned previously how the name "Noseworthy" suggests a brown-noser? I probably did!
Lindsay blinked.
* * * * * * * * * *
Blinking is a sign of hesitation, a thing we haven't really seen from Lindsay before. Maybe in his grudging admiration for Miles Blundell's psychic seizure at the Fair. But that was not about a sudden lack of confidence or being unsure about his present predicament like this. That was just Lindsay not really wanting to say something nice to Blundell but being so overwhelmed with awe that he couldn't really stop himself. Here, he has stopped short and must assess the situation. Why is this little girl showing interest in him?
Dally, intrigued, ran over and stood in front of him, peering up, as if waiting for the next part of some elaborate joke.
* * * * * * * * * *
Even a five year old thinks Lindsay must be putting on the act of a silly man, spewing his stick-up-the-butt nonsense to whoever is trying desperately not to listen. Dally is my kind of human being. She would have understood my hyperbolic anger used for comic effect in my comic book blog. Oh, sure, at first I was pretty earnest! Some readers (who I must have eventually disappointed) loved the blog because it was so free of cynicism and snark. Because I wanted to love DC's The New 52. I wanted it to mean something! I wanted the change to have been thought out. I wanted drama and stories that were telling some kind of coherent story within their new universe. I thought there would be monumental changes! Exciting new avenues to explore in the stale and old personalities that couldn't be changed due to years of continuity! But eventually I realized it was all a sham and DC had hired some of the worst writers for their project and even the editors didn't give a damn. It broke me! It was the last time I was eager and earnest and full of wonder at what the world could offer! But it didn't give me what I expected. It gave me a pie in the face and an atomic wedgie. So of course I got angry! Of course I got cynical! Any sane person would have done the same! But, as Dally would have realized, I was never really angry. My life wasn't so invested in DC Comics that I was giving myself three strokes a week reading Lobdell and Nocenti comics.
One time, Marcus To discovered one of my Batwing reviews where I drilled him a new asshole due to his cover. In his post about how he'd never had a negative review like that, he mentioned how one of his friends thought it was funny in how angry I was. Yes! That was the point, Marcus To's friend! And here's how I ended that review, by the way:
"Ha ha! Look at how much I can bitch and still enjoy reading a comic book! What the fuck is wrong with me?"
But really, I can't blame anybody who thought my blog was reviewing comic books seriously. At some point in the 2000s, people forgot that the Internet was meant for fun and whimsy. Now everybody thinks everything is an argument. Being facetious on the Internet is almost a high crime these days! And I'm not talking about being facetious about things like race or gender; I usually treat that stuff seriously because, as Kurt Vonnegut writes in Mother Night, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend." I don't mind being a super angry super fan of comic books (which I'm not; I really am just pretending at that! Stupid Vonnegut! Take it back!) but I won't participate in racism or sexism by pretending to be a Nazi asshole! Who thinks that's funny?! No, what I'm talking about is going on a huge rant about how terrible Superboy might be in a comic that's written terribly by a terrible writer only to have huge Superboy stans constantly yell at me for criticizing their fictional love boy!
Um, you know what, never mind this entry! I'll get back to Against the Day in the next post!
The child, meanwhile, having caught sight of the Chums in their summer uniforms, stood gazing, her eyes wide, as if deciding how well behaved she ought to be.
* * * * * * * * * *
Can a four or five year old decide how well behaved they're going to be? Isn't that like expecting a cat to behave properly when guests drop by and not to wave their pink butthole in the guest's faces? Aren't five year olds simply themselves with no real thought or consideration? This Dally must be pretty mature for her age. The definition of maturity is being able to choose not to be an annoying asshole. Children often can't make this choice; adults nearly as often can't either.
"Chums in their summer uniforms"
Remember, the Chums basically look like Stripesy from DC Comics:
"Dally, ya little weasel," Merle greeted her, "the corn liquor's all gone, I fear, it'll have to be back to the old cow juice for you, real sorry," as he went rummaging in a patent dinner pail filled with ice.
* * * * * * * * * *
In 1893, a father could make a joke about his daughter being an alcoholic without garnering, from nearby witnesses, the kinds of looks usually reserved for a person cannibalizing another person. Even in 1993, you may have gotten away with it, although at least one person would have to exclaim, "You're so bad!" To which you could have responded, "Me?! She's the one with the drinking problem!" You could still make this joke today, as well, of course, but you have to know your audience. Even if the audience is composed of the kind of people who would side-eye and tut-tut a stranger making this kind of joke in public, they'll almost certainly accept as fine and dandy if they know you. That's the main problem with people judging everybody else immediately and on the flimsiest of experiences in this new online world. Most people judge strangers in the harshest context imaginable, barely being able to imagine giving the benefit of the doubt to somebody they've never met before. The main problem is that we just have too much access to too many people now. Somebody online can tell a stupid, throwaway family story about a can of beans, forgetting that the audience for the story is millions of people with no context of anything except the words on the screen, and they'll roast you for it because, obviously, the worst take they can imagine must be the truth.
"cow juice"
Anybody who uses the phrase "cow juice" is a literal monster and should be burned at the stake. Gonna go on Twitter and search "cow juice" and harangue everybody whom I find using it!
"a patent dinner pail"
I guess this was a pail built to hold dinners and keep them cool which was also patented. This is the kind of amazing insights you won't find on other Against the Day wikis. They'd probably ignore this sentence altogether, not realizing that really dumb people might need help clarifying this book too.
"filled with ice"
I began trying to research when humans began to generate their own ice rather than chipping it off of mountains and glaciers and frozen rivers and shipping it all over the world but there were just too many steps to the process and I easily became bored trying to figure it out. Unless the first commercial ice maker was developed in 1854. Which probably means Laura Ingalls was still getting natural ice shipped from some frozen river up north out of the ice shed while Nellie Oleson was filling her root beers with fancy ice purchased by some manufacturer.
