ATD the norse/nunatak/serpent/odialesque thing

[Dave Monroe]

   "Arrived at last at the depot, I joined a mass of citizerns all
trying to get aboard any outbound trains they could find.  At the
entrance, the ungoverned mass of us was somehow spun into single-file,
proceeeding then with ominous slowness to thread the marble maze
inside, its ultimate destination impossible to see." (AtD, Ch. 12, p.
147)

Cf. ...

   "Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and
alleyways in a Cartesian grid, sketched in sepia, mile on mile.
'TheGreat Bovine City of the World,' breathed Lindsay in wonder.
Indeed, the backs of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human hats.
>From this height it was as if the Chums, who, out on adventures past,
had often witnessed the vast herds of cattle adrift in ever-changing
cloudlike patterns across the Western plains, here saw that unshaped
freedom
being rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right
angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn
through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."  (AtD, Pt. I,
Ch. 2, p. 10)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0701&msg=11438

Also ...

   "'They may not wish to harm us.  They may even in some way love us.
 But they have no more choice  than your own sled dogs, in the
terrible, to them empty, land upon which they have chosen to
tresspass, where humans are the only source of food...." (AtD, Pt. II,
p. 143)

   "'Suppose it were to happen to us, in the civilized world.  If
'another form of life' decided to use humans for similar purposes
[...] we human beings would likewise simply be slaiughtered one by
one, and those still alive to, in some sense, eat their flesh.'" (AtD,
Pt. II, p. 147)