Against the Day, Chapter Nineteen: The Chums of Chance on Counter-Earth!

Book's really winding down at this point. This isn't the last we'll see of the Chums, but it's definitely pivotal. They have the idea that they should go UP. Up being equated with north, as you will remember from way the fuck back at the beginning of the novel. And there's "an updraft over the deserts of Northern Africa unprecedented in size and intensity" (1018). So...they should go there to go up, I guess? Why not? The Inconvenience is growing, turning into more of a social thing; Miles has "hired a top-notch cooking staff, including a former sous-chef at the well-known Tour d'Argent in Paris." Also, they have Pugnax's--girlfriend?--introduced in this oddly florid passage:

Sometimes he thought he'd been waiting for her all his life, that she had always been down there, moving somewhere just visible, among the landscapes rolling beneath the ship, deep among the details of tiny fenced or hedged fields, thatched or red-titled rooftops, smoke from hundreds of human fires, the steep shadowed mountains, pursuing by day the ancient minuet with the flocks... (1019)

The book actually specifically references that previous conversation about up=north, which seems oddly unsubtle for Pynchon--I think we probably could've figured it out without! There's more to it than that though, apparently; it implies infinite dimensions: "each star and planet we can see in the sky is but the reflection of our single Earth along a different Minkowskian space-time track" (1020). Maybe so! At any rate, they do go up and find themselves on...what may be the same Earth, or maybe not. "It was like their Harmonica Marching Band days all over again. They were on the counter-Earth, on it and of it, yet at the same time also on the Earth they had never, it seemed, left." But there are differences: "the boys could almost believe some days that they were safely back home on Earth--on others they found an American Republic whose welfare they believed they were sworn to advanced seemed to irrevocable into the control of the evil and moronic that it seemed they could not, after all, have escaped the gravity of the counter-Earth." But--this is VERY odd--they can't help because they're "sworn by their Foundational Memorandun never to interfere in the affairs of groundlings" (1021). What? Since WHEN? That's the only dang thing they've been doing the whole novel, and ALL the book-titles we've seen from their series indicate as such! What are you babbling about, Pynchon?

So yeah. World War I is going on, or as the Chums note, "something very peculiar indeed was going on down on the Surface" (1022). That's one way to put it, I suppose. A mysterious Russian asks them to look for Padzhitnoff, who, it seems, has gone missing. When they learn what's happening--about the war--we get a powerful bit from Miles:

"Those poor innocents," he exclaimed in a stricken whisper, as if some blindness has abruptly healted itself, allowing him at last to see the horror transpiring on the ground. "Back at the beginning of this...they must have been boys, so much like us...They knew they were standing before a great chasm none could see to the bottom of. But they launched themselves into it anyway. Cheering and laughing. It was their own grand 'Adventure.' They were juvenile heroes of a World-Narrative--unreflective and free, they went on hurling themselves into those depths by tens of thousands until one day they awoke, those who were still alive, and instead of finding themselves posed nobly against some dramatic moral geography, they were down cringing in a mud trench swarming with rats and smelling of shit and death." (1023-1024).

Yeah. But one thing I want to point out: "They knew they were standing before a great chasm none could see to the bottom of." And we all know what happened next. But we have to realize that this isn't really different from utopian thinking: because a utopia is something that you strive for while it also remains, paradoxically, unimaginable. You can't know what it's going to be, and that's what makes it scary. It's in large part why we can't have nice things. So how do you differentiate between risks you should take and risks you shouldn't? Well...I suppose it's kind of a no-brainer that you shouldn't get involved in a giant futile European war. But it's still an interesting theoretical question.

Anyway, they find Padzhitnoff and his crew; they think that the person looking for them would sooner see them dead than anything else, so no need to mention them. Anyway, the Russians are now doing humanitarian aid, and they have redubbed their ship Pomne o Golodayushchiki, which if google translate is to be believed means "Remember the Starving."

Lindsay argues that, since they have a contract to bring in the Russians, they have to either do it or become fugitives. "Maybe Russia's not his country anymore," Darby suggests. You don't know, dimwit." And Lindsay gets off what is admittedly a fairly sick burn: "Not perhaps to the degree of certitude prevailing among the general public as to your mother's preference for the genitalila of the larger and less discriminating zoo animals. Nevertheless--" (1025). So that's fun.

So anyway, "Out in Europe, the great Tragedy went rushing on," and the Chums do their part to provide humanitarian aid. They are becoming involved with the groundlings, whether or not it's against their charter. Which I still don't think it is. Whatevs.

One day Randolph and Padzhitnoff happen to meet in a cafe. Bells are ringing. It's Martinmas, which happens to be November 11, Armistice Day. War over. But not, obviously, people's need for assistance, so the Chums are getting a lot of work. They eventually receive a letter offering them an extremely lucrative--but, natch, mysterious--job in California. So they leave, on good terms with Padzhitnoff and company.

So as they're heading in that direction, they meet a group of female counterparts known as the Sodality of Aetheronauts. "Sodality" is not a word you hear that often in your day-to-day life. I don't, anyway. I don't know what kind of wonderful life you have! Spoiler: "it was to be among themselves, these sombre young women, that the Chums were destined after all to seek wives, to marry and have children and become grandparents" (1030). So that's good. I feel like they're simultaneously in and of time here. Their future wives' names are Heartsease, Primula, Glee, Blaze, and Viridian. Is this a Seven Brides for Seven Brothers situation? No, seriously: I'm asking. I know nothing whatsoever about Seven Brides for Seven Brothers other than that title and the Monty Python sketch where the guy goes "fetch hither the seven brides for seven brothers!"), and I refuse to look it up. But it seems like it might be.

But regardless of such shenanigans, they are still California-bound. The Chums at this point have substantial investment in earthbound businesses, to which Darby reacts in-character: "Yep groundhog sweat, misery and early graves...that's what keeps us flying around up here in style all right" (1033). I mean...he might not be wrong. I don't know. I wasn't there. But it's definitely something to think about. As is this: "Don't say it. I am as fond of the subjunctive mood as any, but as the only use to which you ever put it is for a two-word vulgarism better left unuttered--" (1033). Clearly, this is a good ol' "fuck you," which you kind of assume is the imperative when you hear it, but when you think about it doesn't seem to be: you're not giving an order. You're saying something more like "would that you were fucked." So! Interesting grammar lesson, and I suppose the most popular use of the subjunctive in English.

They get to California, but it turns out they don't have a job: the mailing address turns out not to exist. Doh. But there's a very strange thing where Chick meets his dad, "Dick" Counterfly. For whatever reason, "Dick" is always in quotation marks. Pynchon lampshades the confusing timelessness thing:

"Great Scott, exclaimed the elder Counterfly," ain't we a long ways from Thickbush, Alabama."

"Nearly thirty years."

"Thought you'd be taller by now." (1034)

He invites Chick to eat with them. "Dick" has a wife, Treacle, who is Chick's age and seems to be desperately horny for him. I do not know what if any significance this has. But talking about light and time and god knows what-all, "Dick" also has something that seems to be a proto-television:

Chick gazed with great scientific curiosity as the shimmering image which appeared on a screen across the room from the spinning disk, as what looked like a tall monkey in a sailor hat with the brim turned down fell out of a palm tree onto a surprised older man--the skipper of some nautical vessel, to judge by the hat he was wearing. (1034)

Yes, he appears to be picking up broadcasts of Gilligan's Island. This may make you think of that part in Venice where Chick had a high-tech lighter, somehow fished out of the sea of time--broadcasts from a future that may or may not ever exist.

"Dick" takes his son to meet some eccentric inventors, Roswell Bounce and Merle Rideout. Perhaps you remember them! They may be in danger from...bad people, and "Dick" recommends a capable private detective, Lew Basnight, whom we will see next chapter.

Meanwhile, Merle and Roswell show Chick their invention: "if shooting a photo is like taking a first derivative, then maybe we could find some way to do the reverse of that, start with the still photo and integrate is, recover its complete primitive and release it back into action...even back to life..." (1036). Sure, why not, makes sense. I suppose it's along the same lines as magicians' mirrors that can actually double people. They demonstrate, and Chick is indeed impressed. "It might be something wrapped in the nature of time" (1038) Chick speculated. Might could be indeed!

Anyway, Chick invites his dad onto the Inconvenience for supper, so I guess it's some family togetherness. The end of the chapter, also. Phew. I didn't think I'd have so much to write about this one.