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 Separated by a couple-three letters in name as if alphabetically double-refracted, you could say. . . .

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Let's not forget Merle's drunk while coming up with this theory lest we eviscerate him too harshly. But then I also shouldn't forget that Thomas Pynchon's books are historical fantasies where pretty much anything can be true. I already have no trouble believing that Lew Basnight can hop dimensions, traveling from one timeline to another, possibly even going from the real world to a work of fiction (as opposed to hopping from one fictional Chicago to another). I believe that Randolph St. Cosmo is an angel based on the character Orc from William Blake's America A Prophecy. I believe Pugnax, based on a cartoon character that doesn't yet exist in the novel's timeline, can read. Why shouldn't I also believe that Blinky Morgan and Edward Morley are the same person split in two by some kind of flesh double-refraction invention. Maybe Edward, as a small child, walked into a brick wall one day, diverting himself in one direction while Blinky bounced off at a perpendicular direction (or just came out through the other side?). This could explain why Blinky became a scofflaw and a thief because he found himself all alone and having to fend for himself at a young age. It's like that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they find a clone of Riker stranded on a planet for years. A clone that, may I say, proves Barkley's theory correct that the Federation's teleportation system doesn't work as suspected; it's actually a suicide/cloning machine. It kills the real person and just creates a clone at the destination. How else can you explain a double-refracted William Riker creating Thomas Riker?

I will say the similar name minus the couple-three letters convinced me more than their pictures. That doesn't mean I'm gullible and easily convinced of bullshit; it just means the pictures look so dissimilar one to the other that the spelling of the names was a greater argument for the double-refraction. 

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 Merle arrived to find the "Forest City" obsessed by the pursuit of genial desperado Blinky Morgan, who was being sought for allegedly murdering a police detective while trying to rescue a member of his gang who'd been picked up on a fur-robbery charge.

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"Forest City"
Cleveland's nickname based on an Alex de Tocqueville description in Democracy in America from 1835. Like Blake's America a Prophecy, we have another text written concerning the state of America and democracy, observations of the New World's grand experiment. I read only a little on Tocqueville so my instant judgment of him as "the early 19th Century Ayn Rand" probably doesn't hold a lot of water.

"genial desperado"
The friendly criminal.

"Blinky Morgan"
The leader of a gang of fur thieves, summarized by Pynchon in the rest of the sentence. The dates of the Blinky Morgan fur robbery on January 26th, 1887 to the capture of Blinky on June 28th, 1887, overlap the dates of the Michelson-Morley Experiment (April to July, 1887). The town was obsessed with his pursuit because there was a reward of $16,000 for Blinky and his gang's capture. Also maybe because he killed a detective but people probably hated detectives properly back then.

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 Randolph had a sympathetic look.

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Randolph is probably about to explain how the Chums of Chance are constantly having to move on as well. He may paint it as an issue of living in a balloon and having to take missions all over the world. But I'm sure he's really thinking about how, as an angel, he was required to leave Heaven for his mission on Earth. That's speculation on my part but it's based on evidence!

Remember, my theory is that Randolph is based on Blake's character Orc in America a Prophecy (and other works). He's a fallen character (as in Lucifer!) who symbolizes rebellion and freedom. Orc manages to get Americans to rise up in revolution and bring down their oppressors. From what I've seen so far, Against the Day takes a strong pro-union stance and most of the main characters are sympathetic to the poor and working class.

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 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!"

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 "But every boy knows the Chums of Chance," declared Lindsay Noseworth perplexedly. "What could you've been reading, as a youth?"

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Either Lew is pretty near the same age as the Chums of Chance or Lindsay has just declared the Chums of Chance are either a long standing club with rotating members or the Chums of Chance have always been the current roster, for years and years, because they're either ghosts or angels. You know which one I believe! Although maybe you don't if you haven't been reading my hundreds of blog posts on this book. I believe they're angels! And not just any angels! Randolph St. Cosmo, the captain, is the embodiment of Orc from William Blake's America a Prophecy.

I guess we're also learning that the Chums of Chance books were huge nationwide hits that every American boy proudly read (and every American girl secretly). And that means Lew Basnight isn't American! Or if he is American, he isn't cool and if he's not cool, he isn't American! Or he's from a different dimension which is my favorite theory which I'll definitely have you believing once we get to the Lew Basnight section.

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 16: Line 81 (186)

 Wherewith Randolph saluted, turned, and vanished into the great fragrant darkness.

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Is Randolph the personification of Satan? Remember that his name is an anagram of DAMN ORC ON A LOST SHIP and the "DAMN ORC" part of that is in reference to the character of Orc in William Blake's America A Prophecy who is a Luciferian character of rebellion and unrest! So here we get further proof that this is who Randolph is as he vanishes into darkness.

The darkness is only fragrant because he's in the middle of a gigantic weenie roast (and also maybe because he's surrounded by pre-teen and teenaged boys and, well, you know how "good" they smell).

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 "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!