Against the Blog

So Frank goes down to the mines with Merle, who is positively disposed towards him on accounta him having been a good guy who also saved Dahlia a few times from mistimed explosions. He's very focused on getting Deuce and Sloat, but Merle warns him that people know who he is and that continuing to be in town might be dangerous. Bob is after him, so Merle lets him know of a shortcut through the mine back to town--only there are...people. Or something. Living in there. Tommyknockers, is how they are referred to. Merle gives him "some kind of...meat sandwich" to distract them, and all I can think of is the "grumble grumble" monster in the original Zelda to whom you have to give meat so it'll let you pass. There's a very evocative description of the chaos in town: Pandemonium did not begin to amount to a patch on what seemed to be approaching them instead of they it, swelling to surround them, a valley-wide symphony of gunshots, screaming, blaring on...

That's how "a local lunatic" (281) refers to Telluride at the beginning of this chapter. I mistakenly thought you'd like to know that. Anyway, it's where Frank is. He's surreptitiously looking around--seemingly--for any sign of his father's killer, and also for this Bulkeley Wells person, a vicious anti-union goon. He has a cover story about coming up with some new industrial process for refining gold. He meets the...boss? well, the "man to see" in Telluride, Ellmore Disco. Another fun name, though I'm afraid its deeper meaning is beyond me. He's a man with an even keel, mostly; "the only people he was ever documented to've shot at were those who, either by word or deed, disrespected one of his hats" (283). Which is fair enough. He also meets Bob Meldrum , who I had no idea until now was a real guy. He's a gunslinger with a hair-trigger, and he can supposedly get an in with Wells--actually, this whole chapter is re...

Now, we turn to Frank, who's wandering about, trying to figure out what's what. He keeps meeting sort of suspicious "middle-ranking managers, urban in style with something also of the look of mine inspectors to them" (273), who want to know what he's doing. He determines that they're from Vibecorp, which puts him immediately on the defensive: he doesn't know  at this point that the organization is responsible for his father's murder, but he has his suspicions. It sours, him at any rate, on mining, or at least mining precious metals. He gets into zinc, which I feel like should mean something but I'm not exactly sure what. He has sort of a something with the "girl anthropologist" in question, Wren Provenance. She gets him to take her to a brothel, and there's this weird, porn-y section (I mean, nothing explicit, but still) where they both, possibly, get serviced there, with her conclusion being that the girls have "simply ruin...

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I really didn't remember this chapter at first. I mean, I did once I got into it, but at first it was, huh. They stopped in Venice? But here they are, preparing for their next mission. Here also are their Russian counterparts, for mysterious reasons. These are still the more "adult"--or, I suppose it would be more accurate to say, adolescent, although they're drinking wine and everything--Chums, which is why it seems odd to read that "Chick Counterfly, as the most worldly of the company, [was] spokesman by default in fair-sex encounters that might turn in any way ambiguous" (246). I mean, not that they wouldn't be awkward around girls, but would they be awkward in this very childlike way? Seems weird. But anyway, the situation is pretty interesting: they're here at the behest of this "shadow-doge-in-exile" Domenico Sfinciuno: the idea being that you have this lineage of people who, way back when, were disqualified from possible dog...

We're still with Lew in England. He's trying to get him some of that good ol' Cyclomite, but not having much luck, even when he enlists the assistance of Nigel and Neville, who are huge drug enthusiasts. They go to a laboratory run by this here Dr. Coombs De Bottle, who performs sort of autopsies of bombs to see how they were detonated and how they were built, and it's here that they learn of this sinister Gentleman Bomber of Headingly, who attacks crowds at cricket matches with phosgene bombs--phosgene being a deadly chemical that was used as a weapon during World War I, an important event in this novel. Also, real life. This guy makes you think of the Kieselguhr Kid, a similarly mysterious terrorist and/or anarchist. Is it more doubling? Anyway, Nigel and Neville end up rustling up some Cyclomite for Lew's birthday, so that's heartwarming. Lew's going to meet Professor Renfrew at Cambridge, along with Nookshaft and Crouchmas. Renfrew--who seems like a...

For the record, my actual reading is considerably ahead of this.  I'm not updating this as I read, though I do write a blog entry after each chapter. Now we're back with Lew, who, with Nigel and Neville, has reached England. He is introduced in short order to the group that the two of them work for, True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys. and--apparently on the principle of "go with the flow"--starts doing the same; as Pynchon notes, there were quite a lot of spiritualist groups like this at the time, "as the century had rushed to its end and through some unthinkable zero and on out the other side." You don't have to be a super-huge Pynchon professional (Pynchon Professional--that'll be my new job title) to know that "Beyond the Zero" is the title of the first part of Gravity's Rainbow.  It refers, supposedly, to the point at which a conditioned stimulus is totally inoperative. Does that apply here? Well, it's all very all...

This Jeshimon setting is surreal and hard to make out. I mean that in a good way, but it's just so striking and weird then it's over. I suppose you could equate it with the journey to the Underworld in a classical epic, but I dunno. Seems too early in the book for that. Still, whatever it is, it's very atmospheric. What can I say? It's a death-themed town, which is telegraphed by the fact that "for miles along the trail, coming and going, every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it" (209). There are towers on which corpses are laid for the vultures, which is where Reef will eventually find Webb. First, he meets the Reverend Lube Carnal (there's a name), who cheerfully tells him that "we attract evildoers from hundreds of miles around--not to mention clergy too, o' course, like you woulnd't believe" (210). Point made! But it's not just about murder; it's about all kinds of sin and crime, in a cartoonish way: In town an ambien...