Difference between revisions of "ATD 199-218"

Revision as of 15:22, 26 December 2006

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page 202

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Reasons: Pynchon is reportedly fair-haired and shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Notice that Cooper just sits astride his black and gold V-twin [!]....and after asking "Will anybody mind some pickin?" produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, Grand Concert size [of course!]....'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets'. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Cf. Stevens "Man with the Blue Guitar" re the above. "He does not play things as they are".

Also, a Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

Page 204

Linnet
European finch. Wikipedia

Page 205

against the daylight
A direct example of against the day as against the light. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

"faro boxes"
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. Wikipedia

Page 206

soul-to-soul and down Mexico way
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Down Mexico Way was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMBD. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines
An imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematically terms normally reserved for the flow of turbulent fluids. Their work, along with that of Norbert Weiner, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for Shannon and Weaver, and for information theory.

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Weiner while still in college.

Page 207

"Bob Meldrum"
1920s outlaw. cite

Page 209

"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"....very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an importnat text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into".

Towers of Silence
Wikipedia

Page 210

Reef learns in chatting with the Rev that even certain "accommodations", technically subornation, could be made "for a price" risking "an appropriate fate", i.e. death for money [from the Rev?] even here.

Page 211

"arnophilia": Philia equals "love of" in Greek and arno = The Association of Royal Navy Officers (ARNO)

"Lourdes"...city in France of Virgin appearances to youths and supposed miraculous cures since. See Wikipedia.

a kind of winged God
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Page 212

The upside down star
Talking about the Marshal of Jeshimon, The Rev. of the town says: "'notice anything in particular?...Observe the star Wes is wearing.'...It was a five-pointed star, nickel-plated, like they tended to war, except that it was on upside down. 'Whith the two points up-that's the horns of the Devil, and signifies that Elderly Gent and his works.'"

In Mason and Dixon: The upside star is a symbol two things that are connected: 1. when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at starts in their telescope at measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2. The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

The "upside down star" is also known as the inverted pentagram (with "two horns exalted"), an emblem of the Devil.

Page 213

dusk's reassembly of the broken day
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

Page 214

stole a horse
(What happened to the one he came with, p209?) Probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse...or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it? Or else TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on?

Page 215

Socorro
Could he have been visiting Frank at mine school?

Page 216

"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

disrespect
Corruption setting in?

Page 217

Confederate Colt
See p88.

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