Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 6: Lines 45-46

 "Ah. Some sort of . . . Italian romance, I'll bet?"

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You can't fault Darby for thinking a book called The Princess Casamassima is a romance. I mean, you can't and I can't. But obviously Lindsay Noseworth can! But that's the next sentence!

As for this sentence, what more can be said? Maybe this hints at Darby being less educated than the rest of the crew. Or maybe it's just his youth that keeps him uninterested in lame things like Henry James novels.

I will say, Darby is lucky to avoid demerits or being hung over the side of the Inconvenience for his informality of language here! I mean "ah" and "I'll bet" in the same breath?! Egads! Or are those appropriate? I may have a lousy bachelor's degree in literature which isn't lousy because it's a bachelor's degree but it's lousy because I didn't learn anything about the informality of language! What kind of school just gives you a bachelor's degree without making sure you learned anything while "earning" it!? Come on, San Jose State! Do better!

(I would feel bad if I didn't clarify that that was me being facetious. I loved my time at San Jose State and I learned a lot and nearly every single one of my teachers was memorable and awesome and a delight! I am sorry for being a terrible alumnus!)

Chapter 1: Section 1: Pages 5-6: Line 44

 "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf," replied Pugnax without looking up, which Darby, having like the others in the crew got used to Pugnax's voice—easier, really, than some of the regional American accents the boys heard in their travels—now interpreted as, "The Princess Casamassima."

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This dog is better at stressing syllables than I'll ever be! Good boy.

Pynchon probably decided to have the crew understand Pugnax through this thought process: "In Mason & Dixon, the dog could actually speak English so it was like Scooby Doo. But maybe more like Scrappy Doo since once Scrappy arrived, we saw that dogs can speak perfectly good English and that Scooby Doo must have had a speech impediment (or did we learn that already with the arrival of Scooby Dum? No matter, I suppose!). But weren't there other cartoon dogs that just did their usual dog noises and dog movements and the dog's human companions were all, 'Oh, yes, buddy ol' chum of mine. I know exactly what you mean!' Perhaps this was more believable and more in keeping with my new book which will be somewhat more believable than Mason & Dixon and totally more believable than Gravity's Rainbow (which was almost exclusively about dogs in a Pavlovian sort of way)."

Or maybe Pynchon didn't think that at all. I'm putting a lot of speculative words in Pynchon's mouth in this blog! But that's what Pynchon gets for being so aloof and mysterious!

I wonder what regional American accents Pynchon is taking a shot at here?! "Those people from Mississippi are harder to understand than a yapping mutt, by gee golly whiz!" is something somebody from North Dakota would probably say. That wasn't Pynchon that time!

The Princess Casamassima is a novel about anarchy and revolution is what I have been informed by Wikipedia. The full book is available online and maybe I should read it because isn't Pynchon sort of suggesting readers do that by introducing it so early here? And introducing it by showing the reading dog (representing us, the readers!) reading it?! But also maybe I shouldn't read it because there's no way I'm reading a Henry James novel. That wouldn't look cool in public at all. I might actually get a wedgie or a swirly because of it!

I also don't have to read it because I think Lindsay is going to tell us all about it soon anyway! Oh how I love shortcuts! Now if I can think of a shortcut for this blog! I'm beginning to suspect that this is a project that cannot be completed! By anybody!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 5: Lines 42-43

 Darby Suckling, having recovered from his recent atmospheric excursion, addressed the studious canine. "I say, Pugnax—what's that you're reading now, old fellow?"

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Come on, Pynchon! You couldn't have stuck a comma at the end of the sentence leading into the quote so that I wouldn't have to suddenly feel anxious and weirdly aroused about breaking my one sentence per blog post rule (unless the sentences are part of a dialogue within the same pair of quotation marks (I mean, I guess I have that exception to the rule so why not just make dozens more?! Why even have any rules at all?! It would be fitting to just slip into anarchy on this blog, right?!)).

Not that any of what I just wrote matters. Look at these two sentences! Could they be any more bland and self-explanatory?! It's like Pynchon wrote this first chapter thinking, "I don't want to scare away the readers who picked up Mason & Dixon and were all, 'What language is this written in? Yuck!' So I'll make the first chapter an exciting, easy-to-read adventure story about youths in a balloon who shit over the side of the gondola and are companions to a dog who reads! Then by the time I get to all the Aether crap, they'll be hooked! They'll be all, 'I guess I can read through this chapter on dynamite and this other chapter on Aether and this other chapter on photography and this other chapter on light and this other chapter on unionizing just to get to the next exciting chapter about these kids and their grand adventure!'"

Ha ha! Suckers!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 5: Line 41

 They entered rather the realm of folklore, superstition, or perhaps, if one does not mind stretching the definition, the religious.

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If only Pynchon would use a semi-colon at times like these, it would make doing this project easier! By using a pronoun referring to the subject in the previous line, he's connected these sentences in a manner that should have forced me to discuss them together. So instead of chastising myself by saying, "You stupid fool! You've already read this bit once and you knew Pynchon continued the thought about the falling poo in the next sentence but you were too fucking proud to just add both sentences to the same post, weren't you?! Maybe don't see rules as hard and fast commandments from your God-self, you delusional prick, and possibly do what's best for trying to explicate the text! Mother was right. You're a failure. Pathetic."

"They," of course, refer to the incidents of heavenly shit falling amidst the Earth-bound Preterite. They know not why these things fall. Perhaps great birds fly too high to be seen (folklore), or maybe they fall upon people who looked lustfully on somebody too young (superstition), or perhaps they fall upon people who looked lustfully on somebody too young (religious).

Actually, the religious bit goes far deeper than my previous and totally serious statement might indicate. Human shit falling from the sky may as well be a religious experience in that it's as mystical as transubstantiation. What exists in the sky that can suddenly become human shit, and why would God transmute it? Are these heavenly shits the shits of the dead somehow passing from one realm to the next, desperate messages from beyond the veil?

Also, why would one be "stretching the definition" of religious in this context? Is it because it would seem mean and vulgar to lift human shit to the Divine, even if it is human shit mysteriously falling from the heavens? Perhaps Pynchon's definition stretching of religious is subtle condemnation on the entire ministry, comparing holy miracles to human and dog shit falling from the sky (an act that we see, in the previous sentence, has an all-too-scientific explanation).

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 5: Line 40

 An old aerostat hand by now, Pugnax had also learned, like the rest of the crew, to respond to "calls of nature" by proceeding to the downwind side of the gondola, resulting in surprises among the surface populations below, but not often enough, or even notably enough, for anyone to begin to try to record, much less coördinate reports of, these lavatorial assaults from the sky.

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I'm stuck on the phrase "not . . . even notably enough" when describing how people reacted to human and dog-sized shits falling upon them from out of the sky. How is that not notable?! I get hit one time by a human-sized piece of shit from out of the sky and I never stop fucking talking about it! I spend my life seeking solace via hardline retribution against the bastard who shit on me and I tell everybody I ever meet about it! Sure, Pynchon says it's not notable enough to try to keep a record on these events. But it's not like they're mysterious. How fast is the airship moving and how fast does human excrement fall? I get hit in the head by a large piece of shit, I'm looking up and noting everywhere it could have come from. And that airship puttering away to the North is a pretty likely candidate!

I suppose I'm thinking about it in too modern a way. In 1893, everybody's lives were more localized. And probably more religious and mysterious too. And also probably filled with a lot more encounters with shit. Maybe in 1893, getting hit by a large turd from out of the blue was just another tedious moment in a long day of tedious moments at which a person could only shrug and think, "God's ineffable, baby!" So poo falling from the sky might become a local talking point down at the bar—"Hey, ya hear about Zeke getting blindsided by some cosmic turd? Hilarious, ayuh?"—but the story might never actually travel to the next town where it could cute meet with another story from that area about old Randy gettin' splattered from above. In 1893, maybe dots were too hard to connect over even relatively small distances. And probably the least of everybody's problems. "So ya got shit on from the sky? Big whoop! I just lost my baby in a runaway thresher accident!"

Is that a thing? A runaway thresher? I lived in Nebraska for one year and all I learned was that every farmer I ever met had at least half a digit missing and that the summer humidity was so awful that I couldn't live there another year.

Was the big news story at the time Pynchon was writing this that thing about blue ice? It was a plot point in the 2003 finale of Six Feet Under so maybe?

Perhaps this one sentence is foreshadowing how the enemies of the Inconvenience will eventually learn to track their movements! Just follow the scat impact craters!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 5: Line 39

 He had learned with the readiness peculiar to dogs how with the utmost delicacy to turn pages using nose or paws, and anyone observing him thus engaged could not help noting the changing expressions of his face, in particular the uncommonly articulate eyebrows, which contributed to an overall effect of interest, sympathy, and—the conclusion could scarce be avoided—comprehension.

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Big deal! Pugnax can turn the pages of a book! My cat can yell at me and paw me and knock stuff over until I do exactly what it wants! Of course, my cat doesn't have the weird nearly human eyebrows of the dog. As George Carlin pointed out, cats just have all them fucking whiskers stuck up all over the place. Or whatever. What am I, the quote section of IMDB?!

My cat, Gravy, also knows that the doorknobs open the door but she can't quite figure out how to turn them with her stupid thumbless hands. That doesn't stop her from trying. Whenever I'm in the bathroom, I wind up thinking some murderer with a debilitating muscle disease is fumbling weakly with the doorknob, unable to quite get it turned.

In essence, Pynchon is saying, "Look at dogs! Just like people!" He once said, "Dogs do such human things which is totally an attribute of dogs and not commentary on how we humans humanize them! They really do read and turn pages and speak German and talk with famous surveyors! They're so cute the majority of humans don't mind picking up their warm steaming feces in their bagged hands to carry back home (or, for the worst of the dog owners (and, to be as judgmental as possible, we all know dog owners are already the worst of the humans! Oh, don't get offended! Don't tell me when you see somebody who smokes walking a dog with an acoustic guitar on their back, you don't immediately think, 'There goes one needy motherfucker!'), carry only so far as the next house's garbage can)."

Just try to prove that's not a direct Pynchon quote!

So can Pugnax read or did he just learn, the way dogs learn by just watching and then by encouragement when they mimic their human friends, to turn the pages of a book? Pynchon sort of leaves it open to interpretation here. Here we see a dog doing that thing dogs do when they learn a trick and that trick looks like it's doing something absolutely human to a human watching it.

My money is on Pugnax being able to read. Pynchon's world is always better than the real world.

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 5: Line 38

Ever since the Chums, during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capital (see The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit), had rescued Pugnax, then but a pup, from a furious encounter in the shadow of the Washington Monument between rival packs of the District's wild dogs, it had been his habit to investigate the pages of whatever printed material should find its way on board Inconvenience, from theoretical treatments of the aeronautical arts to often less appropriate matter, such as the "dime novels"—though his preference seemed more for sentimental tales about his own species than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid.

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Ah! Finally one of those terribly long Pynchon sentences to break down! This is an easy one compared to some of Pynchon's truly titanic attempts at destroying the definition of a sentence. At least this one isn't about toothpaste.

Being that I'm on the Internet, a bunch of people are going to automatically assume that I'm insulting the toothpaste bit from Gravity's Rainbow and rush to its defense. "Oh, I loved that bit!" they will say in such a way that assumes I did not love that bit nor did anybody else, for that matter, love the bit as much as they did. I assure you, I thoroughly enjoyed the bit about the toothpaste and the toothpaste containers and the toothpaste itself journeying through the mouths and bowels and dreams of the adults and children of London until it was washed out to sea. I'm sorry if I don't treat the things I love and enjoy as sacred! You know, it is possible to defecate on something you love! You would know this if you were General Brigadier Pudding.

 Oh! "But the sentence," you cry, "what about the sentence?!" As if you need me to say anything at all about it! You do know there are Thomas Pynchon Wikis out there dedicated to squeezing out every drop of possible discourse from every reference Pynchon makes, right? That's why I'm not doing that. My philosophy is "Sometimes you don't know what you know about the thing you're shitting on until you've shat on it." I wish I had children so I could pass that down as our family motto.

Plus I don't think I'm shitting on Pynchon in this blog (I've given up on the not swearing. It's become an affectation to avoid my true self much like my silver walking stick topped by the platinum wolf's head has become not just a literal but a metaphorical crutch). Saying that I have is just me overcompensating for my Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea comic book blog. That blog is dedicated to my love of comics in much the same way a Christian bestows their love upon God by blowing Satan.

What I'm saying is love is complicated.

So, the Chums picked up a dog while on a secret mission in Washington, D.C. I wonder who "The Evil Halfwit" was! Judging by the age of the Chums of Chance, it's got to be Grover Cleveland or Benjamin Harrison, right?! No wait! This book was written in 2006 and I always forget to look at Pynchon's stuff through the eyes of the time it was written and not through the eyes of the time the book takes place (as if time had eyes! Ha ha!)! So the Evil Halfwit is definitely George W. Bush. Bosh! Sorted it.

Of course that doesn't make sense in the fiction but does that matter since the book, The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit, doesn't actually exist anyway. This fake story has the children rescuing a puppy from a huge dog fight in the capital. Did they name him Pugnax because of his aggressive and combative origins? Probably! Who else would have named him, idiot?! (That's me scolding myself and not me scolding you, the reader. I would never! Unless you're a Trump fan and then get the fuck out of here, dickfart.) 

As an aside—as I'm happy to constantly admit my own ignorance—scrolling through a list of past presidents to see which presidents could have been in power during the Chums' short lifetimes is like scrolling through a list of the most mediocre white-bread-and-mayonnaise deli sandwiches (if some of the sandwiches were exceptionally stern and off-putting).

Look at fucking McKinley ordering his mediocre sandwich! That expression scolds, "WASABI?! GOD NO! LIGHT MAYO! AND HOLD THE GODDAMNED DEVILISH PICKLES, YOU APISH VOID!"

I know I went from comparing the pictures to sandwiches to comparing them to a person ordering sandwiches but what can you do? I certainly don't have the passion to correct or edit myself!

I'd like to believe some sort of hint regarding when this Chums of Chance mission took place could be garnered from Pugnax being a pup and now being not a pup but Pynchon doesn't give us Pugnax's age. How long are dogs considered puppies for anyway? Four years? Eight?! Nobody knows.

I would be remiss to not point out that the Washington Monument is an erect phallus. Good one, Pynchon! Ha ha! Boing! Boner City!

The main point suggested by this sentence is that Pugnax can read and enjoys doing so. He will read anything he can get his paws on but prefers Jack London to William Shakespeare. Although he'll have to wait about ten years or so to enjoy London's work. Hopefully he's not too old of a dog! Bah, this is a Pynchon book. Pugnax will probably outlive everybody and also wind up being the narrator of the entire book. He probably wrote all the Chums of Chance stories! What a good boy.