Iceland Spar, Chapter One: Fear and Loathing in the Far North!

Somewhat surprisingly, this takes up more or less where the last chapter (and part) left off, with the Chums of Chance up in Iceland. It seems there's a "Ray-Rush" on, where people are looking to get "light and magnetism" (121)--one of those things that is perhaps more metaphorical than literal. We used to have gold rushes and the like, where people were looking for clear, tangible things--but this search for the intangible, outside the realm of what Pynchon would call the "secular," is something else. This first part of the chapter is sort of confusing because you have this Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.) (122), and you get a conversation that appears to be members of this group, but then it turns out just to be the Chums again? It's disorienting, I have to think intentionally.

Most notably, they meet their Russian counterparts--of course they have Russian counterparts--the Tovarishchi Slutchainyi, which, per google translate, means approximately "comrades of randomness" (more doubling, obviously--perhaps especially relevant in this Iceland-Spar-centric section of the book). Specifically, they meet Randolph's counterpart, Igor Padzhitnoff. And this is sobering evidence of what shitty reader I evidently was when I first read this book, because this isn't, like, subtle or anything, but it one hundred percent went over my head:

The parallel organization in St. Petersburg, known as the Tovarischi Slutchainyi, was notorious for promoting wherever in the world they chose a program of mischief, much of its motivation being opaque to the boys, Padzhitnoff's own specialty being to arrange for bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage the targets designated by his superiors. (123)

Get it? He attacks his targets by DROPPING TETRIS BLOCKS ON THEM! I el oh el'd when I read this for sure. Still, in defense of thirteen-years-ago me, the way Pynchon sticks this detail in in a totally deadpan way and then immediately moves on makes it perhaps justifiable to miss. Perhaps. Note also that Padzhitnoff's name is rather close to Alexei Pajitnov's (which could no doubt also be romanized as "Pajitnoff"). The Tovarischi's ship is known as "The Great Game," but I think that is more tenuous as a Tetris connection--that's not a term anyone uses to refer to Tetris, and the connection to the actual Great Game--the imperial rivalry between Britain and Russian in the nineteenth century--seems more on-point. As usual, though, it's probably polysemous.

Igor gives some ominous warnings about emergency doings around I.G.L.O.O.--see, it's clearly not the Chums--about deadly, nameless creatures: "In part of Russian where I grew up . . . all animals, no matter how large or dangerous, had names--bears, wolves, Siberian tigers...All except for one. One creature that other animals, including humans, were afraid of, because if it found them it would eat them, without necessarily killing them first. It appreciated pain" (124). This is probably a totally random non-connection, but it reminds me of Tatayana Tolstaya's dystopian novel called in English translation The Slynx.

They take a short leave, and after some casually racism from Randolph ("these are a Northern people, remember . . . they're not likely to mistake us for gods or anything, not likes those customers back in the East Indies that time" (125), they all buy little statues from a tourist trap, which neatly undercuts any claim of cultural superiority. But these statues do suggest to them "some expression of a truth beyond the secular" (126) so we're on-brand.

That's just the first part of the chapter, however. The second one is a little disorienting because it introduces us to characters we've never met without really giving us much if any information about that. First, there's the Penhallows, Constance and her grandson Hunter, an artist. The family owns a big Iceland Spar concern. Hunter is planning on leaving, stowing away with the current Arctic expedition, and he'll turn up again later on in the novel. At this point, I don't know that I have much if anything to say about him.

But mainly, we're focusing here on the crew of this ship, the Étienne-Louis Malus, which is crewed by various scientists, most notable the captain, Dr. Alden Vormance. Also here is Scarsdale Vibe's son Fleetwood--naturally, Vibe money is funding this expedition. Goddamn capitalism gets all over you, never get it out.

Mainly, there's a lot of scientific and mathematical discussion, and I'm not gonna lie to you, this is a bit hard for me to follow. I will do my best, however. We get here our first mention of quaternions, which--help me, wikipedia!--are "a number system that extends the complex numbers." Okay then. I guess even if it's a little hard to understand the specifics, we can at least grasp that we're talking about moving into a world of abstraction which may end up somehow impacting the real world. Also, "Reimann space," and don't even TRY to get me to say anything about this.

But what I get out of this is the relevance of different planes of existence, or things that have "a different relation to time, anyway." (134)

Iceland Spar is what hides the Hidden People, makes it possible for them to move through the world that thinks of itself as "real," provides that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen. They and others as well, visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect. (ibid)

You may associate this both with Merle Rideout's idea that Edward Morley and Blinky Morgan are the same person; you may also, if you've read the book before, connect it to the Chums' future antagonists, the "Trespassers."

The last part of the chapter is Hunter going to an Icelandic take-out restaurant called Narvik's Mush-It-Away Cuisine, where he orders something called a "Meat Olaf." He leaves in the morning. His grandmother is sad but resigned. I really seriously don't know what to make of this. The complicated math might be easier. But I think I've written enough about this chapter, so let's move on, yeah?