Iceland Spar, Chapter Five: You Never Did the Kieselguhr Kid!

That title is a Gravity's Rainbow reference, and a fairly obvious one, I'd've thought...but actually, a little googling reveals that I'm apparently the first one to ever make it on the internet, which is kind of amazing to me.

But who IS the Kieselguhr Kid? I want a bumper sticker that says that. Like so:

The best bumper stickers are the ones that only .0000001 percent of the population have any chance of understanding.

But anyway, it's a question that Lew Basnight would like an answer to: he's now in Colorado, and White City Investigations (having subcontracted the case from the Pinkertons) is on the case. He's a mysterious guy, like a gunman, but instead with sticks of dynamite (kieselguhr is a kind of that can be used to produce same). Does it seem like it would be easy for an actual gunman to take down such an individual? "Wouldn't bet on it. Got this clever wind-proof kind of striker rig on each holster, like a safety match, so all's he he has to do's draw, and the 'sucker's all lit and ready to throw" (172). Well, would it at least be easy to identify such an individual. Apparently not, because his looks are mutable, or so it seems: "it was as if physical appearance actually shifted, causing...identity itself to change" (ibid). No, we don't get a clear bead on exactly who this guy is. Is he an actual, literal anarchist (Webb himself?), or is he just a sort of embodiment of chaos?

Cryptic conversation with a journalist for the newspaper of a town called Lodazal (Spanish for a mudhole or morass), trying to get things established:

"But so far all we've really got's a mining town that ain't built yet."

"Silver? Gold?"

"Well, or anyway...containing this metallic element that ain't exactly been--"

"Discovered?"

"Maybe discovered, but not quite refined out?"

"Useful for...?"

"Applications yet to be devised?"

Hmm! Actually, he might be talking about uranium here. There ARE uranium mines in Colorado. Could be another veiled reference to atomic energy, and the atomic bomb in particular (all this talk about explosives); perhaps looking forward again to the horrors of the twentieth century.

Anyway, Lew is becoming increasingly radicalized here, and he notes, of the explosions going around, that "these bombs could have been set by anybody, including those who would clearly benefit if 'Anarchists,' however loosely defined, could be blamed for it" (173). Of course, this is complicated by the fact that there are definitely actual anarchists here setting off actual bombs. You can't JUST blame the owners and their agents, and anyway, aren't our sympathies largely with the real anarchists? Well, obviously, there are different kinds of explosions, with different political valences. But this is certainly extremely reminiscent of today's American fascists blaming Antifa--extremely vaguely-designed in a very Pynchonian way--for everything bad or perceived as bad.

Lew is getting increasingly mixed up here, not sure what side to be on or what any of this means: "American geography had gone all peculiar and what we he supposed to be doing stuck out here in Colorado, between the invisible forces, half the time not knowing who hired him or who might be fixing to do him up" (177). Nate Privett comes out from Chicago for an inspection and basically quits when it comes out that the agency is really just happy to get paid; it doesn't matter if they actually find anything, per se. He has a conversation in an Anarchists' saloon with someone who may or may not be the Kieselguhr Kid, who disavows the idea that he's ever killed an innocent person. Of course, what does "innocent" even mean here, has to be asked.

He accidentally ingests a small amount of a substance called cyclomite, used--natch--for making explosives. It makes him hallucinate, and he develops a habit. Boy, we talk about explosives, through chemicals, changing the world, and here we see them literally changing a person's mind. Richly suggestive stuff.

Anyway, the chapter end with a bang: Lew is caught in an explosion set off by persons unknown. He thinks he's dead, but then he's not: he's found by two Upper Class Twit of the Year contestants, Nigel and Neville (more doubling), who are vacationing in the US. They give him a tarot reading, and to his natural question--"what in hell's going on here" (186)--the Hanged Man card comes up, so that's ominous. Maybe. The two of them are returning to England, but they feel they need a Wild West souvenir, and what better for that use than our ol' pal Lew? So--why not--he agrees to go with them, and that's where we leave them. We'll see much more of them in future chapters.