Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 49: Line 93 (886)

 The company began to sing, from the Workers' Own Songbook, though mostly without aid of the text, choral selections including Hubert Parry's recent setting of Blake's "Jerusalem," taken not unreasonably as a great anticapitalist anthem disguised as a choir piece, with a slight adjustment to the last line—"In this our green and pleasant land."

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"Workers' Own Songbook"
When I search for this on the Internet, I only get referred back to Against the Day. So I'm going to assume this is a fiction on Pynchon's part. And maybe this fiction will help me to understand the enormous error in the second half of this sentence.

"Hubert Parry's recent setting of Blake's 'Jerusalem,'"
This setting of Blake's "Jerusalem" to music is super recent in 1893 because he didn't actually do it until 1916. But that fact seems way too easy for Pynchon to have missed. He's placed so many other subtle clues to how to read a scene or why certain words were used for the time to suddenly place a quite specific moment in time twenty-three years too early. Perhaps this is why he places it inside a fictional book of songs taken up by Unionizers and Socialists. Perhaps he saw the historical path of the song and Parry's love and hate for having written it and decided it was a good metaphor for his 1893 story about workers fighting for their rights in the century after the Industrial Revolution.
    You see, Parry's song was written for a Fight for Right campaign. The Fight for Right Movement was a patriotic movement to bolster failing morale among the British people in the advent of the terrible death toll of the first World War. Parry began to find the super patriotic fervor of the Fight for Right Movement distasteful and withdrew his support of the movement which seemed implicit due to his writing of the music for "Jerusalem" for the Fight for Right campaign. It even seemed like he might withdraw the music entirely from general use. But then he was approached by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies for its use at Suffrage events, eventually asking to make it the Women Voters' Hymn. Parry was delighted to see his music used for a good and joyful cause, even giving the copyright over to the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.

So you can see how Parry and the history of the song make it a perfect song for the oppressed and downtrodden. So do we forgive Pynchon for this anachronistic error because it fits the theme?

Or do we chalk this up to a reference to Doctor Who seeing as, according to Wikipedia, "An extract was heard in the 2013 Doctor Who episode 'The Crimson Horror' although that story was set in 1893, i.e., before Parry's arrangement." Against the Day is set in 1893! So this is probably Pynchon commenting on the show's error and not an error of his own, right? Or it's Pynchon's way of incorporating Doctor Who into the Against the Day universe, seeing as how Doctor Who messed up time by bringing Parry's musical version of "Jerusalem" back to 1893!
    I know Against the Day was written in 2006 and that Doctor Who episode was from 2013! But that's just more time travel shenanigans!

"Blake's 'Jerusalem,'"
I've mentioned multiple times how this book has reminded me in various ways of Alan Moore's Jerusalem and now we have Pynchon mentioning the poem here. I've also theorized that Randolph St. Cosmo might be reminiscent of Blake's character Orc from America a Prophecy written exactly 100 years before this story.
    But more to the point, Blake's "Jerusalem" can be seen less as a patriotic call to make England great but as a call to the masses to forsake and throw down the system which keeps us from experiencing heaven on Earth. Throw down the dark Satanic mills and lift up your golden bow fit with the arrows of your desire. Grab up your spear and ride your chariot of fire into battle. He basically calls for revolution. Which makes it perfect then to subvert via patriotic propaganda. "Oh, no, no, no! This isn't calling for reform at all! This poem is about, um, making England Great Again! Pish posh now! Off you go to die in the trenches! God bless us!"

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 19: Line 158-162 (263-267)

 "There's lights, but there's sound, too. Mostly in the upper altitudes, where it gets that dark blue in the daytime? Voices calling out together. All directions at once. Like a school choir, only no tune, just these—"

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This book just keeps reminding me more and more of Alan Moore's Jerusalem although I can't entirely pinpoint why. I guess this bit that seems to be about angels or the voices of the dead being heard in the "heavens" is vaguely reminiscent of his story about a "heaven" that's physically just above the Earth, so close that pigeons often find their way there and trees grow up into it (although just the tree's spirit is there or something. It was a long book! I can't remember every detail!). Moore's book was also populated with angels and dead kids running around on adventures. Maybe the only similarity is the adventuring kids and because of that, I've decided the kids are angels and/or ghosts, thus causing me to compare every part of their adventure to the Dead Dead Kids in Jerusalem.

The voices in the heavens also keep bringing me back to parts of Gravity's Rainbow since so much of it is tied up in medium Carroll Eventyr and the dead with whom he communicates. In Gravity's Rainbow, Katje once describes the rocket's arc as the life of the rocket, being birthed in Penemünde and dying in London. But the rocket's arc is not just an arc; it's part of a sine wave. So its trajectory would, theoretically, continue down past the point of impact. This would be the afterlife of the rocket which must be of some concern in the novel seeing as how Pynchon's story is often concerned with the afterlife and how the opening epigraph of the novel is by the father of the rocket, Wernher von Braun, and reads, "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." And so how does the rocket live on after its death? It lives on in how it impacts our culture's perception of death; it lives on in the force it's unleashed on our knowledge, and our perception; it lives on in manipulating our fears and our hatreds. And somehow, all of these things are part of the entire arc and life of the rocket, probably coalescing most thickly about the apex of the rocket's trajectory (and possibly, following the sine wave, most thickly about its nadir underground as well. But that's subconscious talk and I'm already too deep in the weeds on this one as it is). This built up force, whatever it might be, might possibly attract the dead somehow, explaining why Roland Feldspath winds up at this height when he finds himself attached to Slothrop and Slothrop's quest for the 000000 rocket.

There might also be something with the apex being the point Gottfried succumbed to heat and suffocation while traveling in the 000000 rocket.

"There's lights, but there's sound, too"
Perhaps the kids are picking up on radio signals? Maybe even alien radio signals from UFOs. More likely, they're seeing heavenly visions of angels and hearing angelic choirs. Or, although this is basically the same thing only once removed semantically, ghosts of the dead, calling out in unrest and flashing lights, the only things they can manipulate in the material world.

What I'm trying to express is the kids have stumbled onto a Scooby Doo Mystery! Except when they pull off the mask of this baddie, they're going to reveal the face of God! Which is probably a metaphor for light which is like the most important thematic element of this book.

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 11: Line 11 (116)

 "Blundell, what in Heaven's name!" Randolph exclaimed.

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Exactly the kind of expletive an angel would use! I've got you figured out, Mr. Saint Cosmo!

Unless Randolph's an orc because if you make an anagram of his name (including the full word "saint" and not just the St.), you get "LOST ORC ON A DAMN SHIP." Or maybe "DAMN ORC ON A LOST SHIP!"

No wait! What if we look toward William Blake's America A Prophecy wherein the character Orc is seen as a Luciferian character. In other words, damned, or an angel expelled from (perhaps an all-too-earthly?) heaven! According to Wikipedia—because did you think I actually had this Blake stuff in my head? I barely have that poem about the tiger with laser eyes still up there! Although, thanks to Moore's Jerusalem, I've now heard Blake's poem, "Jerusalem," in song quite a few times (the best time being by Jo Brand on Taskmaster)—Orc is described as a "Lover of Wild Rebellion, and Transgressor of God's Law" and he "symbolizes the spirit of rebellion and freedom." At one point, he "emerges from creative fires to challenge the forces of imperialism" (that was also a quote from the Wiki page about the character Orc).

This all fits in with one of the main themes in Against the Day, right?! Anarchy and rebellion against the empire of the United States of America! America A Prophecy saw print in 1793 so exactly 100 years prior to the start of this book. Coincidence?! Um, probably? But maybe not!

Am I going to have to read up on Blake to understand this book the way I should have read up on Blake to understand Alan Moore's Jerusalem? Although I probably should have read more Joyce for that one too! The characteristics and story of Orc as summarized in the Wikipedia entry on him parallel a lot of the ideas I've seen so far in the first chapter of this book. What's also weird is there were times while reading the first chapter that I felt Pynchon's text was in dialogue with Moore's text, so much so that I had to re-check the publication date on Jerusalem. And as I knew but couldn't remember for sure, Jerusalem had been published nearly a decade after Against the Day. But if both books are heavily referencing themes from some of Blake's mystical and strange writings, wouldn't it seem like they were in dialogue? Oh, and they're also probably in dialogue thanks to James Joyce! But that's a reading for me for another decade!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 7

It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen ship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind.

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The Chums of Chance! I haven't been this excited about reading the adventures of a bunch of kids since I read Alan Moore's Jerusalem starring that celebrated club of dead children, the Dead Dead Gang! I'm not familiar with any specific children's adventure book series that feature a bunch of kids running about the world finding mummies and fomenting revolutions against tyrant kings. But that's probably because I grew up in the 70s and 80s and was too busy watching Scooby Doo and the Outerscope series from Vegetable Soup. I mention children's adventure book series because both Moore's Dead Dead Gang and Pynchon's Chums of Chance are well-known in their worlds for the books detailing their adventures. (This is kind of cheating since I'm discussing something that isn't in this sentence. I hope that you, and God, will forgive me.)

We'll learn more about the Chums of Chance and how they're literary heroes in a series of semi-fictional books in a semi-fictional book later. Or are they literary heroes in a series of non-fiction books in a fiction book set in a semi-historical setting? What am I in all this?! Probably the only real person in a simulated setting created for my own entertainment.

The name of the ship has probably launched a thousand essays but it doesn't do a lot for me. Reading anything is an inconvenience, especially when you know there are new episodes of Animaniacs to watch on Hulu. I suppose to people who aren't super intelligent and literate like I know I am (and not like how stupid dumb dumbs all think they're smart! I would know if I were a dumby who thinks he's smart! I'm sure of it!), reading a Pynchon novel would be the biggest inconvenience of their lives because they'd keep looking up from the pages with a look that is the only way they can express how inscrutable the text is seeing as how they don't know the word "inscrutable."

Oh yeah! I know I just sort of casually put that out there but yes I did indeed read Alan Moore's Jerusalem. Talk about an inconvenience!

If I could feel shame, I'd feel shame for using that whole "talk about an X" bit. Especially since it barely makes sense. The most inconvenient part of reading Jerusalem was that I desperately needed reading glasses while doing so and instead of purchasing some, I just held the book further and further away from my face as I continued to read it. I finally got reading glasses so I could draw detailed colored pencil maps of the Apple IIe game Deathlord.

The patriotic bunting indicates the Chums of Chance are super into the American dream. What side of the labor movement will they be on? Union busting or shorter work weeks with safer working conditions?! Is that a question I should be asking after reading this statement? Probably not, according to my Children's Literature teacher. She'd be all, "Stick to only information you can glean from the words in this sentence, you dumb bastard!" Then she'd force me to do a deep dive into the word "bunting" to figure out why, exactly, Pynchon chose that specific word. I'd respond by resenting the entire assignment and deciding I'd rather get a C- than do what she wanted me to do.

The last bit of information that I've gleaned from this sentence is that the Chums of Chance are heading up to Chicago from the South where they probably just finished a thrilling adventure that modern audiences wouldn't feel comfortable reading about due to all of the casual racism. Not from the Chums of Chance, I'm sure! Most of them are probably as woke as a character could be in 1893!