The Light Over the Ranges, Chapter Five: Franz Ferdinand! Not the Band! Probably!

Yes indeed: this chapter starts with Lew having to provide security for the visiting archduke, whose assassination twenty-one years later would spark the First World War, which is presented in this book as emblematic of the coming horrors of the twentieth century. Here he's presented as a "demented princeling" (46) who wonders is Lew can arrange him getting to hunt Hungarians for sport. Apparently he was super-racist against Hungarians; wikipedia quotes him as having written "the Hungarians are all rabble, regardless of whether they are minister or duke, cardinal or burgher, peasant, hussar, domestic servant, or revolutionary." It's hard to know what to make of this section (which is really only a few pages), other than an ominous presaging of future events as well as an example of European affairs intruding into the United States. Then again, does it really need to be more than that? It does contain one good joke, where Lew is hanging out with Max Khäutsch, the Archduke's Austrian security guy:

They got into the habit of early-morning coffee at the Austrian Pavilion, accompanied by a variety of baked goods. "And this might be of particular interest to you, Mr. Basnight, considering the widely known <i>Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit</i> or pastry-depravity of the American detective..."

"Well we...we try not to talk about that. (47)

Hey, I'm not saying it's anything all that amazing! It's just a joke about cops liking doughnuts! But it makes me laugh. "Pastry-depravity" is funny. Google translate gives either "cake batter corruption" or "pie dough corruption," which are also good.

Anyway, then Lew meets some of these dreaded anarchists. When he gets to the meeting hall, "at first [he] took it for a church" (49)--suggestive for sure. There is a Reverend Moss Gatlin, "the traveling anarchist preacher," speaking, and Lew realizes, mirabile dictu, that these are just regular people--we're clearly getting a lot of Pynchon's own sentiments here. They sing a song that "if it did not break Lew's heart exactly, did leave a fine crack that in time was to prove unmendable," and furthermore, he "understood that this business would not end with him walking out the door tonight and over to the El and onto some next assignment" (48). This is all interesting, but I'm not sure if it ever quite pays off; I could be wrong, but I really don't remember him having much of an arc in this book, and it's true, isn't it, that his last appearance is years later in a very uncomfortable thing with Lake Traverse, right? I'm not making that up, am I? Well, we'll see. In the meantime, it's worth lingering on some of the language here:

He found himself out by factory fences breathing coal-smoke, walking picket lines in various of W.I.C.'s thousand disguises, learning enough of several Slavic tongues to be plausible down in the deadfalls where the desperate malcontents convened, fingerless slaughterhouse veterans, irregulars in the army of sorrow, prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate. (51)

That is so beautiful and so close to the bone it just makes me want to weep. Never mind Lew talking to Nate after learning that he's being transferred to Colorado (coal mining activism, of course, plays a huge part in the novel):

"Ever come out of work in this town when the light's still in the sky and the lamps are just being lit along the big avenues and down by the Lake, and the girls are all coming out of the offices and shops and heading home, and the steak houses are cranking up for the evening trade, and the plate-glass windows are shining, with the rigs all lines up by the hotels, and--"

"No," Nate staring impatiently, "not too often, I work too late for that." (52)

Again, just gorgeous. We can see here again Lew's vaunted powers of observation.

So Lew's packing up and leaving; I don't want to get TOO bogged down, but Vanderjuice reiterates this idea about the West being this wild place of potential that just comes down to mechanized violence (53). We return briefly to the Chums, who are having an incipient existential crisis: we are a long way from uncomplicated Boys' Adventure now, with

sky-stories of extended duty so terrible in its demands on morale that now and then, unable to continue, some unfortunate Chum of Chance had decided to end his life, the overwhelming choice among methods being the "midnight plunge"--simply rolling over the gunwale during a night flight. (54).

What does it <i>mean</i> for mythic characters to have these thoughts, or to commit suicide? This is a fascination tension throughout their narrative. Point being, they're feeling depressed. But don't worry! Things will get better! One interesting thing to note is that not only they, but their ship the Inconvenience too, is changing, beginning "to acquire its own sources of internal power" (55). How? Well, presumably in the same way that if you read a Hardy Boys book from the nineties, you're going to encounter different culture and technology than one from the forties. But now, for the time being, we must leave the Fellows, wishing them well.