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 As the ordeal went on, it became clear to certain of these balloonists, observing from above and poised ever upon a cusp of mortal danger, how much the modern State depended for its survival on maintaining a condition of permanent siege—through the systemic encirclement of populations, the starvation of bodies and spirits, the relentless degradation of civility until citizen was turned against citizen, even to the point of committing atrocities like those of the infamous pétroleurs of Paris.

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Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Where do I . . . I mean, how does one even . . . it's just, I'm reading this boys' adventure novel with some slapstick nonsense and a talking dog and maybe a line here or there that's all "Hey, the poverty stricken immigrants are like the cows in The Stockyard in Chicago, mates" but mostly just kids doing wacky crazy super scientific stuff in 1893 and then Pynchon blackjacks me over the back of the head with a sentence like this. Okay, sure. Sentences like this are why I'm writing this blog. But where do I even begin?!

Should I begin with Peter Sascha, the control who put Carroll Eventyr into contact with Roland Feldspath (whom I've mentioned before as a possible voice or spirit in the skies), and how Sascha's death in Gravity's Rainbow ties into this? Or should I start by asking questions like the previous question because it's easier than actually wrapping my mind around Pynchon's sentence and its ties to Leni Pökler in Gravity's Rainbow and the history of anarchism and the Paris Commune and Mikhail Bakunin and Rosa Luxemburg and the earlier Chicago Stockyard comparison and . . . and . . . it's so much. So, so much.

Pictures get to be celebrated for saying a thousand words simply because they contain no words themselves, allowing them to encompass all of the words and thoughts evoked by the image. But words also say a thousand words, and more, simply by referring the reader to so many, many other words that have come before. It's simply why The Bible is so important to the Western Canon. Just by naming your character Ruth, you automatically imbue that character with certain traits and expectations for people who know the story. Heck, Steinbeck just used the letters "C" and "A" to clue the reader into everything they needed to know about every character in East of Eden (the title alone saying a thousand or more words).

Maybe I'll start at the back simply because the phrase "pétroleurs of Paris" gives me something to research!

"infamous pétroleurs of Paris"
When Pynchon wrote Against the Day, academics had already determined that the idea of arsonists burning Paris out of spite at the end of the Siege of Paris was propaganda (it's also worth noting that Pynchon uses the male gender of the word while the main point of the propaganda was to demean lower class women by painting them as vicious vandals acting out of spite. Seeing that it's Darby explaining these things to Chick, I'm certain he wouldn't have an entirely clear historical perception of the events of twenty years previous. I'm surprised, as I pointed out in the last entry, that he even knows this much!). But in 1893, Darby would certainly have heard of the women burning buildings as the end of the Paris Commune was in sight and as Versailles forces were violently restoring the old regime (or setting up the new regime, anyway, since the Third Republic never could figure out who to put on the throne to reestablish the monarchy and so just stuck around as the Third Republic).
    The point of calling up these arsonists and vandals is to show the kinds of acts humans can be driven to because of the way civilization acts as a siege upon humans. And yet Pynchon certainly knows Darby is using state propaganda as evidence of man's intolerance for vandalism, destruction, and incivility. The propaganda outshines the hope and optimism of the people attempting to change their world for the better. Although, really, you don't need propaganda to point out that some leaders in the Paris Commune wanted to reestablish the Committee of Public Safety. I mean, yeeshers!

"how much the modern State depended for it survival on maintaining a condition of permanent siege"
By observing the Siege of Paris from above, these balloonists were forced into a new perspective of the world, one which literally had never existed before. You might think it would be an optimistic and uplifting new perspective because they're balloonists in balloons and the metaphor is just floating there. But instead, it was a pessimistic view of civilization as a kind of jail rather than a necessary tool for human advancement. The balloonists are like a character in a Philip K. Dick story. They're all, "Hey! Check this new technology out! It's so much fun and carefree and could probably really change the world!" And then they experience the reality of the new technology and they're all, "Oh no! What is happening?! Is this the same world I used to know? Am I the same person?! How did I not see the iron cage that surrounds us all?! How do we escape this prison?!" And even though the balloonist was just sitting right there inside the thing needed to escape the prison, he was too tied to life in the prison to do much but philosophize about it. Meanwhile the little apple cheeked balloonist off to the left who kept crashing all of his balloons knew the answer!
    Speaking of Catch-22, some of these balloons used for communication did land, accidentally, far from their intended locations, like Norway! So see? The reference didn't totally come out of thin air.
    I don't know exactly how to visualize a "condition of permanent siege" but if I take the word of these balloonists, I suppose I can just walk outside and check out my local bank and supermarket and police station and hospital and watch some political newscasts and, well, that's what it would look like!

"through the systemic encirclement of populations, the starvation of bodies and spirits, the relentless degradation of civility until citizen was turned against citizen"
I mean, it's 2021. I was born in 1971. And while lots of young people think nobody ever fought the good fight until they themselves arrived and the world before was just a bunch of people shrugging their shoulders and not constantly struggling against the powerful who either owned all the capital or were in a position to grant endless political favors to those people, I've got some super sad news for them. We've been attempting to resist and change things for a long time now! They're just better at stopping us from doing it, what with their power and their endless piles of cash and their ability to distract most of us with opiods and The X-Files. So things just kept getting more and more terrible (like the degradation of civility and the starvation of spirits and the encirclement of populations by warmongering police forces) no matter how much push back there's been. Oh, sure, sometimes the pendulum begins swinging in favor of equality for everybody. But the idiots who see equality as some kind of zero sum game which causes them to lose something always ensure that the pendulum swings right back to hatred and bitterness and injustice.
    My guess is that the balloonists saw all of this and saw how terrible it was and saw how it was all waved away as the status quo and obfuscated as the rewards of civilization so they decided to live in the sky forever and drop their poop on the world below. And that's the origin of Aeronautic Clubs!
    Or there might be a more important point to Penny's story. I'll get to it eventually, I'm sure!

I'm sorry to say I can't quite tie together all the things I wanted to tie together in a long essay because I lost one of the threads in my head somehow. Somewhere along the way in my reading of Gravity's Rainbow, I looked up and learned about Mikhail Bakunin. But for some reason, I thought it was tied to Leni Pökler and her dream of Rosa Luxemburg becoming president of a socialist Germany. It wasn't. So while I wanted to tie Rosa and Leni and the November Revolution in Germany to the Paris Commune and Mikhail Bakunin's philosophies helping motivate the attempted restructuring of society during that time, I can't. I don't know where the connection is anymore!

Lacking the connection, let me at least point out that Mikhail Bakunin is the founder of collectivist anarchism. So even if he's not specifically important to the rest of this book, his ideas and philosophies almost certainly will be.

But what part of Gravity's Rainbow led me to look him up?! At least now, because of this Siege of Paris digression, I've learned quite a bit about the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune and Mikhail Bakunin. And in trying to tie Bakunin to Rosa Luxemburg, I've learned a lot about the November Revolution and the Weimar Republic and socialism and both Rosa and Mikhail's objection to Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat." Hopefully I can keep it all in my head as I read the rest of this book over the next fifteen years!

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 For Chick's benefit, Darby explained that this outfit had first been formed over twenty years ago, during the Sieges of Paris, when manned balloons were often the only way to communicate in or out of the city.

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"For Chick's benefit"
And for the reader's benefit as well! Thanks, Darby!

"this outfit"
The Garçons de '71! The boys of 1871! The boys of summer! I mean, the boys of autumn! Or winter? I don't know exactly when the boys first manned their balloons in Paris. Maybe they used pigeons in autumn and then the pigeons flew south for the winter so they needed ballons at that point. Then the Garçons de '71 took over in their balloons. I'll learn more when I get to the "Sieges of Paris" section and actually read the Wikipedia on it. I have no idea what it was! I know a lot of people on the Internet have trouble admitting when they don't know something because it's so easy to learn about something between postings in a heated flame thread on whether Dave Sim is or is not a misogynist and then to pretend you've always known that fact. But I know so little facts that it's simply easier to admit I'm an idiot than to try to keep straight all the ways I'm pretending to be smart.

"over twenty years ago"
Yeah, do the math! 1893 - 1871 = over twenty years ago!

"Sieges of Paris"
Oh! This took place during that Franco-Prussian War my high school history teacher, Mr. Bush, kept going on and on about. It's sad that thirty years later, I only remember a few clear things about that class. One was that he put pictures of all the Civil War generals on the chalkboard's chalk tray and we took a quiz where we had to name them. Second was taking a quiz on Watergate and me being the only student to pass. And not just pass but to get a perfect score while nobody else came close. Granted, I was doing my semester report on Watergate. And the third and main one was when he chastised Laurie Zitzer while giving a lesson by saying, "What are you blind?" and she erupted, "Yes, actually, I am!" She wore the thickest glasses I've ever seen and was almost certainly legally blind at the time. Mr. Bush was a fairly pale man but that day he would have been mistaken for a tomato. Fucking kudos to Laurie for that response, by the way!
    What I learned reading about the Siege of Paris is that I'm easily bored by accounts of historical battles. But the important part of what I read was how balloons were used to get letters in and out of Paris while it was under siege by the Prussians. But more importantly than even that, I learned that the balloons carried pigeons out of the city so that the pigeons could be used to return messages back to France. So it was a cooperative mission between balloons and pigeons!
    When I was Darby's age, I never could have explained to a friend of mine any important events that took place twenty years before I was born. I was too busy learning the lyrics to the theme of The Gummi Bears cartoon.
    

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 "Well we were over by Mount Etna there back in the spring," Penny said, "and you remember those Garçons de '71, I expect."

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I don't know where Penny is going with this story but this is a heck of a way to begin it. Doesn't she know the old comic book adage, "Every comic book is somebody's first"? She needs to clear this story up quick because what is she talking about?! Mount Etnas? Spring? Garçons de '71?! I certainly don't remember any of that!

"Mount Etna"
A volcano in Sicily, Italy. But you knew that. The Bindlestiffs visited in April or May. Maybe March. Or June.

"those Garçons de '71"
The boys of 1871! Now my brain is singing at me "After the boys of summer Garçon!" I don't know who the Garçons de '71 are. Probably an aeronautic club. But I don't have to speculate because, like Chick Counterfly, we, the readers, are new to this group. Darby knows this and he'll be explaining this reference so we don't have to do any work trying to figure it out.
    I wish Darby were a character in Gravity's Rainbow.

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 "News to me. Inconvenience, we're only the runts of the Organization, last at the trough, nobody ever tells us anything—they keep cutting our orders, we follow 'em, is all."

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Now Darby's shrugging really comes into focus. How does he care so little about these strange sightings and strange lights in the sky?! When I was Darby's age, I read every book I could find about the Bermuda Triangle or the Loch Ness Monster or the Money Pit or the Abominable Snowman or UFOs! I even read The Amityville Horror in 5th grade because it was about paranormal shenanigans! Is Darby just acting all pouty because of the Organization's leash about his neck keeping him from exploring files from the X folder? Is this a kid's way of pretending not to give a dang darn because he has no control over his own life and his excitement for something which he can't explore on his own terms just causes emotional pain and turmoil?!

"the runts of the Organization"
Who is this mysterious organization?! And why are the Chums of Chance the runts of it? Being that they're running into another crew of child aeronauts, I suspect they aren't the runts because the other members of the Organization aren't children. Or maybe that's a poor suspicion. The Organization is probably run by a secret cabal of adults doing who knows what. But they need eyes and ears all over the globe and the balloons are only capable of holding a crew of children. The number of adults needed to man a balloon would probably weigh it down too much. So the Chums of Chance have no real leadershp role in the organization; they are just the eyes and ears to report back, and the hands to accomplish far off errands.

"nobody ever tells us anything"
I suppose nobody ever tells Darby and Chick anything. And possibly Miles. But I bet Randolph and Lindsay know far more than they're willing to tell the rest of the crew. Like how Randolph earlier wandered off on his own in formal attire for some secret rendezvous.

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 Darby shrugged.

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You would think a short sentence like this would be a relief to me because it means one quick and tidy entry knocked out when I've got tens of thousands left to go. But it really just fills me with anxiety. "How am I supposed to say something clever or stupidly funny about this?" I wonder after I've read it and spent ten minutes on Twitter and then clicked back to the blogger tab and read it again.

Oh fuck! I just realized what this entry should have been since there's obviously nothing much to talk about!

Okay, okay! Let's start over!

* * * * * * * * * *

*shrugs*

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 "Warnings," said Riley.

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Riley continues the "traveling by air these days is super ominous, guys" trend.

What would voices in the sky be warning aeronauts about? Probably the advancement of technology and the sciences toward nuclear proliferation, would be my guess! Or maybe the voices are warnings from the angels and/or the dead and/or God about mankind rising too high above their station, like a recurrence of the Tower of Babel story. The aeronauts' flights are a metaphor for mankind's ambition toward knowledge and the dangers of moving too far too fast. Like the Bindlestiffs being caught in that upriser and almost dooming themselves.

Oh! Which also means the near crash of the Chums of Chance is also probably a metaphor about how mankind can't move quickly backwards once they've attained this new knowledge! They must move steadily and with caution, no matter how they attempt to stride into the future.

Steady as she goes states the old sailing proverb! Unless it was originally a proverb told by goat herders.

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 "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.