Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 36: Line 10 (592)

 Lew Basnight seemed a sociable enough young man, though it soon became obvious that he had not, until now, so much as heard of the Chums of Chance.

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If you're hanging out with the Chums of Chance and they realize you don't know who they are, the best they can describe you as is "sociable enough." That's more forgiving than how I'd think of him if he hadn't heard of Grunion Guy. I mean, how can you not have heard of Grunion Guy? The author of "A Really Scary Story" which was once read, by Daniel Justice, before a large crowd of science fiction nerds that included Connie Willis?

Speaking of Daniel, I'll be playing in a Zoom D&D campaign that he's Dungeon Mastering soon (if it doesn't all fall apart). I'm going to be playing my Dryad Paladin named Preterite Chastain. I'm super nervous since I haven't played D&D for years and I've never played in a game that wasn't just all of my long time high school friends! What if I embarrass myself by making Preterite too sexy?!

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 The guards lounging by the doorway seemed to grow more alert.

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Whose perspective is this bit of narration from? If an omniscient narrator, wouldn't they know for sure if the guards grew more alert? If the narrator were not omniscient, I suppose this would be a fine thing to say to the reader, as if the text were the Dungeon Master of a role playing game and the reader the player character.

"Gary the Small mouths off to the wizard," declares Gary Rochambeau, clutching either side of his hobbit's character sheet in anticipation of the wizard's reaction.
    "The guards lounging by the doorway seem to grow more alert," replies Dark Cyrus, his Game Master.

I suppose if we think of Ray Ipsow as Gary the Small in the previous example, it makes sense. Ray would have known he's pushing the limits of Scarsdale's patience and so checks to see how Vibe's bodyguards are reacting. But we know the narrator is some omniscient fan of the Chums of Chance Adventure Book series. Unless the narrator changed when the story began following the Professor and Ray, leaving the Chums at the steakhouse.

Anyway, Ray probably realizes he should shut up before he gets his ass beat.

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 All meanwhile stared or squinted avidly, attempting to verify the reported apparition.

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Imagine growing up in a time when you were so starved for images of naked people that you were desperate for a good squint at one hundreds of feet below you while you were riding in a balloon. Most of you youngsters who grew up post-Internet have no idea how difficult it was for some of us! Sure, cable television really helped for people interested in boobies. But if you wanted more than that, you were in for quite the quest. Especially if what you wanted was an image of an erect cock.

In the 70s and early 80s, your best bet was to search through the bushes of your local high schools. You'd definitely find dozens of empty beer bottles and hundreds of bottle caps and, if you were really lucky, you'd find a stash of hardcore pornographic magazines. I don't know what people in the 60s did to see naked people. Went to a concert or an orgy or Golden Gate Park any day of the week in San Francisco? I bet seeing naked people peaked in the 60s and then the 70s made it a little more difficult and then the 80s made it practically illegal. Thank AOL for the People's Internet in the 90s!

In the 50s, I think you had to get married to see a naked person. At least one of the opposite gender. You definitely still had to shower with people who had the same equipment as you in school (this really sort of lasted until the 70s, I think?), so gay people were the only ones getting lucky in the seeing naked people that titillated them regard. Lucky bastards. I mean, obviously they weren't lucky in all the ways that society was built to oppress them! But they were seeing all that naked junk, at least!

In the Edwardian Age, to see a naked woman, you had to go to war in Europe and visit a French brothel. In the Victorian Era, you had to join a club that published erotic literature and then all of the images were pretty much line drawings.

Oh! That reminds me that another way to see naked women was to purchase the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual published in 1978. The amount of times I jerked off to the Succubus picture is none of your business! Also I was only 7 in 1978 so it was at least zero times in that year.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 1

 Now single up all lines!"

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This is it. The stupid first line of this stupid book that made my brain vomit-scream the idea "You should do a blog where you just write about each individual line of the book!" as I was trying to stop repeatedly playing the old Animaniacs theme song in my head in an effort to remember the lyrics they changed in the new Hulu series. I guess the vacuum that was created sucked in this other terrible thought because my brain has no respect for the amount of time I have to do all the things I already want to do every day. My brain apparently thinks I'm a lazy piece of excrement that needs more projects that I'll never finish not because I abandon them but because the "never finishing" bit is a feature. Here are a few projects I've given myself over the years that I knew I would never be able to finish as soon as I created them:

An online comic based on both Dungeons & Dragons and The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo called Dwarflover. Admittedly, this project has a terminus built into it: the capture of all thirteen ghosts. But the execution was purposefully expansive to give me too much to write about. Eventually the Photoshopping took its toll on me and the project was abandoned after two ghosts (Freddy Kreuger and Acererak) were captured after finishing one dungeon (The Tomb of Horrors). I had the theme and plot of the next dungeon (Dungeonland) figured out in my head with the first chapter written and the second and third chapter basically plotted out in my head. Maybe I'll return to this when I retire.

Reading every holy book (including Dianetics because, I mean, right?) as an areligious person who is mostly unfamiliar with the dogma of the religion and trying to interpret the text as literally as possible. This project was a lot of fun but ultimately abandoned (maybe until I retire from retirement?) after writing 335 pages on the first 45 pages of Genesis. This might still be my favorite project I ever abandoned. It was written in the style of a study guide and included sections like Science vs Faith, Drawing Time, Historical Facts, and Know Thy Enemy. The science versus faith section was always based on some theme in that particular section of The Bible (the subject of the last section I wrote about Joseph in Egypt was "Magicians") and a good amount of the historical facts were actually facts about the television show Lost (this was because I often confused Abram with J.J. Abrams). One entire section was just the first episode of the old Star Trek series inserted and discussed as if it were a chapter of The Bible. It used to be on the Internet (and still might be archived in weird Way Back Machines managed by top hat wearing cows) but I took it down when I thought, "This could be my first book!"

A blog discussing every book DC comics published when they flushed their entire universe and began The New 52. This was just the culmination of a dream I had when I was 12 where I thought, "Wouldn't it be great to be able to buy every single comic DC publishes so I can keep up on the entire story of all their characters?!" The answer turned out to be "No, it's not great. Not at all. Especially when they picked up all of Marvel's worst writers for the project."

Places & Predators, a roleplaying game based on The Game of Life. Technically this isn't exactly a project with "never being able to finish" baked in. I could have completed the basic game and then the "never finished" part would be continually writing modules and building the world. But seeing as how the "never being able to finish" is just a part of my DNA, I kept rewriting the rules. Over and over and over. Ultimately I did put out a finished project based on Cribbage and not The Game of Life. But I did add a character class, Cult Member, and a cult within that class who believe the world they're living in is a pale imitation of the actual world and that world is the original game I created. So I can still force all of my work back into this game! Also, the new game based on cribbage is also just based on the original world so it's not like I've thrown out all the writing I did. It's all still viable! This project actually exists in the real world and you can buy a copy of the basic rules with a starter module on Amazon Kindle!

Can I include "reading Burton's translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night" as a project since I've been reading that three volume monster for over ten years now? No, probably not.

I guess none of that was about this line from Against the Day, was it?

If the first line wasn't Pynchon telling the reader to pay attention to every individual line then I'm wasting my time. Because if every line of Pynchon's text is simply plot related then Pynchon isn't as interesting as I first thought. Also, I would have to learn about singling up lines and whatever that means. I know it has to do with launching a ship (an airship in this case!) but it's easier to jump straight to the possible subtext because that's all speculation that takes place in my head! Learning about the actual meaning of "singling up a line" means having to do outside reading. And who wants to read?! I'm a Writer not a Reader!

Oh, the other reason I decided to do this blog is because I've been complaining recently about my old college Children's Lit professor in my Gravity's Rainbow discussion over on my other blog and how she always tried to get us to write entire essays based on one line from the text. And she was insistent on keeping it out of context of the rest of the novel as much as we could! What was she, crazy?! How do you even do that?! I have no idea because she always marked me down for going too wide on my discussions and not focusing in enough. Maybe I'll finally learn how to do it on this blog!

I will, however, be writing a lot about me because that's all a sociopathic narcissist really knows about.

The Epigraph

 It is always night or we wouldn't need light.

            —Thelonious Monk

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm not even into the meat of the book and it's trying to overpower me with the assumption of things I should know about! Am I going to have to learn jazz to understand it?! I mean, sure, it's a hefty book at over 1000 pages but I still didn't expect to be nearly pinned just after the table of contents! How much should I know about this guy Thelonious Monk?! And why would Pynchon choose a quote by him that boldly proclaims, "There is no day! It's all night, baby!" What am I up against then?!

Thelonious Monk (whose middle name is Sphere (Thomas Pynchon's middle name is Ruggles. Why does everybody else seem to have a cool middle name while mine is basically just Dave or Sally? (I mean, you'd expect somebody named Thelonious Monk to have a pretty cool middle name. But why would Pynchon get Ruggles?! It's not like he's Australian))) is, according to the Internet, an American jazz pianist. I point out that this is information from the Internet because I would have probably just said, "He's some jazz guy." Then everybody who loves jazz would have thrown Internet tomatoes at me and I'd become the disgrace of Buchser Junior High School.

I should probably be more careful about my identity since I'm on the Internet and I've just insulted jazz by not being into it enough. But just calling my junior high school a "junior high school" actually centers me in a quite specific time and place since before that, it was a high school, and after that, it was a middle school. So now people can already pinpoint my age and location if they wanted to throw actual tomatoes at me. Although, it's quite possible I've moved since then! Ha ha! Just try to find me, jerkos!

No, no. Please don't! I apologize!

Anyway, I'm not going to write a book report on Thelonious Monk. Either you know who he is or you can go read Wikipedia. I should probably, at least, read Wikipedia. He might be important to the rest of this novel! And anyway, what good is reading a Pynchon novel if I don't learn more about the stuff he seems to know everything about? Who is this guy? Is he a computer? I bet he's actually a computer!

As for the quote, it's pretty profound, isn't it? I mean, it's always night! Always! Everywhere! And the only reason we can see anything is by producing light. Sometimes we produce light by just sitting still on the face of the Earth and waiting for it to rotate around so the sun gives us some of that precious light. But it's still night if you were to take away the sun! That's a pretty cool way of looking at reality. Sometimes you need somebody like a comedian or an American jazz pianist to come along and sweep your legs so that your entire world view changes from staring at the acting tough scared kid in front of you being screamed at by his lunatic coach to the rafters of the gym where the tournament is being held. Then after you catch your breath (literally in the analogy and figuratively in the reality), you would probably wind up saying something like, "Whoa! I never noticed that before!" And sometimes, you can't ever go back to thinking like you did before!

As for now knowing that everything is always night, you'll probably forget that one. It feels less like a startling revelation and more like when your nerdy friend who probably has Asperger's says, "You mean today," when you find yourself up past midnight playing Dungeons & Dragons and you casually mention what time you have to work tomorrow.

So I decided to read Monk's Wikipedia page and this description of Monk struck me as something maybe Pynchon felt (or feels?) a bit close to:

"Monk was highly regarded by his peers and by some critics, but his records remained poor sellers and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for more mainstream acceptance."

I wonder if Monk's music also had an inordinate number of references to boners?

Every section of Monk's Wikipedia page seems to end in a confrontation with police. I can't imagine the kind of person who reads that and thinks the police were just doing their job. How are we living with people who still don't understand not just systemic bias and systemic racism but actual boots on the ground racism?! The cops weren't just content to hassle, arrest, and, at times, beat him. They also tried to end his career by taking his New York City Cabaret Card which allowed him to play public venues where alcohol was served. And who except drunk and buzzed people enjoy jazz?!

Oh crap! Here come those Internet tomatoes!