Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 19: Line 156 (261)

 "You mean aside from the usual," Darby said, "fata morgana, northern lights, and so forth?"

* * * * * * * * * *

"fata morgana"
What Morgan le Fey has to do with lights in the sky . . . well, I was going to say I don't know but I probably do know seeing as how she's a sorceress and maybe a fairy if you take her name literally. So I guess she could be casting Shooting Stars or Fireball or Dancing Lights or Meteor Swarm.
    Actually, "fata morgana" is just a super cool mirage that makes it look like boats are floating in the sky or turns land masses & ice floes into castles hovering over the horizon. Here's a simple scientific diagram taken from Wikipedia to explain it:

At least I think that explains it for people who understand science. It also might just be a bunch of lines drawn to seemingly make sense when they don't really. I mean, why is that guy's vision going all over the place?! Probably has something to do with the curvature of the Earth or being born on Krypton, right?!

"northern lights"
These lights are caused by ionization of particles by solar winds in the Earth's magnetic field. They are a portent of the coming atomic age in Gravity's Rainbow. They also seem too awesome to be real so while I don't disbelieve in them, I'll only truly believe in them when I see them.

"and so forth"
I can't think of any other natural phenomena that might be mysteriously observed in the sky. I guess Venus?

The First Chapter Title

 The Light Over the Ranges

* * * * * * * * * *

The initial image evoked by this statement is a small avocado green kitchen range sitting up against a greasy peach wall with a two bulb light overhead (one bulb burnt out, the globe filled with the corpses of generations of flies and moths). I'm pretty sure that's not the kind of range Pynchon means.

I suppose he could mean a range of mountains. Or the ranges like in that folk song about that place where the deer play.

The light probably means that thing that we need because it's always night. See how we already have a theme developing? Day and light in every section so far (except the picture of the coin. But for all I know, the writing could be translated as "The main point of this book is to save Daylight Saving Time.").

The second image this statement evokes is of the Northern Lights which makes me think of Gravity's Rainbow and Slothrop's memory of watching the Northern Lights as a youngster and having it scare the feces out of him and his speculation on some other lights after.

"But what Lights were these? What ghosts in command? And suppose, in the next moment, all of it, the complete night, were to go out of control and curtains part to show us a winter no one has guessed at. . . ."

So I guess besides the Northern Lights, I'm also now thinking of the light of an atomic explosion. But that shouldn't matter in this book, right? It takes place (according to something I read. The back of the book?) between the Chicago's World Fair and World War One. So how would the atomic bomb fit in?

But then also ask yourself this! The atomic bomb would have fit in well in Gravity's Rainbow (even though the entire story takes place in Europe) and it's only mentioned in a cryptic newspaper headline Slothrop notices in a puddle which reads:

MB DRO
ROSHI

So it might exist in this novel as it did in Gravity's Rainbow, as a ghost or a phantom haunting practically everything. It's dramatic irony! We, the reader, know it's coming even if the characters don't know nor will ever know because the novel ends well before the bomb is even invented! I bet it's even a huge specter in Mason & Dixon!

Okay, so maybe I've wandered too far afield on this one. The light over the ranges could also just be symbolic of knowledge being spread. Or maybe it's literal and it's the light from the airship which begins the novel, or just the bright lights of the Chicago World's Fair.

I should declare right here in this section that I will be returning to various entries to add postscripts to them as I get further and further into the novel. So just think of these entries as fluid. Maybe I should also explain that I'm not reading the novel one line at a time and then writing about that line before reading the next line! I'm actually reading the book and then, later, when I'm sitting around bored because none of my friends are playing Apex, writing these entries.

* * * * * * * * * * *

First Postscript

After having read a bit more, it seems, possibly, that the lights over the ranges could be UFOs.