ATDDTA (6) 171 -174

[bekah]

Chapter break -

Meanwhile, back in Colorado, Lew Basnight is searching for the 
Kieselguhr Kid for White City Investigations and thinks he senses his 
presence everywhere,  tricks of the sunlight,  possibly.  Theories 
abound and Biblical references are made.   An allusion to Ted 
Kazinsky certainly seems evident.

171: 9

The name Kieselguhr Kid is similar to Kenosha Kid, a sequence in 
Gravity's Rainbow. which may have taken its name from a 1931 pulp 
fiction story by Forbes Parkhill, a two-fisted wild west adventure. 
<http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?>

  Kieselguhr is a clay/sand which is used for many things including 
dynamite which was invented by Alfred P. Nobel.
<http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/industrial/articles/krummel/>

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171: 14	"...hardly a day passed without the an unscheduled dynamite 
blast in it someplace, the philosophy among larger, city -based 
detective agencies like Pinkerton's and Thiel's began to change, 
being as they now found
themselves with far too much work on their hands.

  detective agencies like Pinkerton's and Thiel's .
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Detective_Agency> 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Detective_Service_Company> 
<http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsteunenberg.htm>

More dynamite blasts resulted in more work for the big detective 
agencies (Pinkertons,  Thiels) who sold off the unsolved cases 
to companies like White City Investigations.

*******************
171: 20  
The unsolved cases included higher-risk tickets including that of the 
long-sought Kieselguhr Kid.
The Kid's family had supposedly come over as refugees from Germany 
shortly after the Reaction of 1849.
There had been an attempted revolution in Germany in 1848 and in 1849 
the new Assembly was disbanded by the military forces. The reaction 
impelled many people to emigrate to the U.S - known as the
<http://www.germany.info/relaunch/culture/history/1848.html;>

The Kid-to-be lived for a spell in the Sangre de Cristos southernmost 
sub-range of the Rocky Mountains stretching from Poncha Pass in 
Colorado to Glorieta Pass, New Mexico.
<http://www.sangres.com/mountains/sangres.htm>


(This section seems to eliminate the idea that the Kid is Traverse 
Webb in disguise.)

*******************

172:5    Kieselguhr Kid didn't carry guns but rather had dynamite 
strapped to him in big bandoliers. 
<http://www.trapdoorcollector.com/cavalry.html>  (think dynamite)

Easy to recognize?  No.  because the dynamite seems to blast out the 
memory of his appearance.   And he was so quick on the short fast 
fuse that all he had to do was draw.

Similar to Butch Cassidy  -  plenty about him out there -  he and 
Sundance fled to South America in 1901 to evade pursuit from the 
Pinkerton Detective Agency, following a string of bank raids on the 
Union Pacific railroad.  They used dynamite to blow up the tracks 
and/or train.  <http://www.legendsofamerica.com/WE-Pinkertons.html>

  <http://www.utah.com/oldwest/butch_cassidy.htm>
<http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/c/CASSIDY,BUTCH.html>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy>
<http://texashistory.unt.edu/permalink/meta-pth-19985:1>  (wanted poster)

*******************

172:26    "Did something, something essential happen to human 
personality above a certain removal from sea level?" 

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172:27       "Many quoted Dr. Lombroso's observation about how 
lowland folks tended to be placid and law-abiding while mountain 
country bred revolutionaries and outlaws." 

  Lombroso's theory was that criminality was inherited, and that the 
born criminal could be identified by physical defects, which 
confirmed a criminal as savage, or atavistic. 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso>

*******************

172: 30:	Theorizers about the recently discovered discovered 
subconscious mind reluctant to leave out any variable that might seem 
helpful, couldn't avoid the altitude, and the barometric pressure 
that went with it."

"The psychoanalytic unconscious is similar to but not precisely the 
same as the popular notion of the subconscious. For psychoanalysis, 
the unconscious does not include all of what is not conscious. It 
does not include e.g., motor skills, but only what is actively 
repressed from conscious thought. It does include instances of 
automatic processing such as stereotypes and the effects of past 
relationships on the present." 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis>

William James,  a prominent psychologist of the times used the term. 
"The subconscious, it seemed to him, was the doorway through which 
the ultimately transforming experiences that we call mystical appear 
to come -- transient, passive, states from which the intellect itself 
may be derived."  <http://www.radicalacademy.com/philjames.htm>
word origin: 
<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=subconscious>and De Quincy, 
best known for "Confessions of an English Opium Eater." 
<http://supervert.com/elibrary/thomas_de_quincey>

*******************

172: 32  "This was spirit, after all."

*******************

172: 34    "Right at the moment,  Lew was out in the field in 
Lodazal, Colorado chatting with Burke Ponghill, the editor of Lodazal 
Weekly Tidings

lodazal m. bog, quagmire 
<http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=lodazal>
l
Lodazal Colorado - a fictitious. fictional town.   (it's not built yet)

*******************
173: 13      "'The voice in these letters,'    Ponghill tapping the 
pile of loose sheets in front of him, 'Far from belongin to some 
crazy passionate South European or semi-educated Peter specialist, 
it suggests instead an hombre who knows full well that something has 
happened to him, but for the life of him he just can't  figure what- 
you know that feeling? - sure, who don't? - and he's tryin to work 
'at through, here on paper, how it was done to him, and better yet 
who did it.  But by damn, look at his targets.  You notice he always 
identifies them by name and address, without getting all general as 
some of the bombers do, none of that "Wall Street," or "Mine Owners 
Association," - no, see, these evildoers're  all clearly indicted, 
one by one."

"Peter specialist"         someone who is prophesizing the end of the world
2 Peter 3.7 -
"But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are 
kept in store, reserved unto fire ** against the day**  of judgment 
and perdition of ungodly men." 
<http://www.bartleby.com/108/61/3.html#S5> (King James)

***
An aside:
Speaking of  the prase "Against the Day"  as a biblical reference see:
(all King James  version)

Job 38:23
Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of 
battle and war?

Proverbs 21:31
The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD.

John 12:7
Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath 
she kept this

Romans 2:5
But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto 
thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the 
righteous judgment of God;

2 Peter 3:7 (King James Version)
But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are 
kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and 
perdition of ungodly men.

***
*******************
173: 22    "got us a man of principle"
 From Pynchon Wiki: 
<http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_171-198#Page_172>

Like Ted Kaczynski,  the Unabomber? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber>
There a several tenuous threads of connection between Pynchon and the 
Unabomber. Pynchon has written works exploring the dangers of modern 
technology and, more specifically, ludditism. [1] [2] As a young man, 
Pynchon co-wrote such a play, Minstral Island, with his Cornell 
classmate Kirkpatrick Sale, who later would become one of the world's 
most prominent and outspoken luddites. Sale later said, "The 
Unabomber and I share a great many views about the pernicious effect 
of the Industrial Revolution, the evils of modern technologies, the 
stifling effect of mass society, the vast extent of suffering in a 
machine-dominated world and the inevitability of social and 
environmental catastrophe if the industrial system goes unchecked," 
although naturally Sale condemned the Unabomber's method. When the 
Unabomber's identity was still unknown, Pynchon was suggested (with 
who knows what degree of seriousness, and by whom) as a possible 
suspect. [3] 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon#1990s_and_2000s>

*******************
173:25     "jizzmatic juices backin' up, putting pressure on the brain"
Lew apparently thinks that Ponghill is suffering from a lack of sex.

'Jizzmatic juices'    <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jizz>
<http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_171-198#Page_173>

*******************
173:36      "Don't mean he ain't got a right to his privacy."

This is about opening 'the Kid's'  mail which is more on the 
Unabomber/Kid/Pynchon  parallel.   Kaczynski sent his bombs through 
the mail and there was a huge FBI manhunt.  his letters to his 
brother were the evidence.   Meanwhile,  Pynchon closely guards his 
own privacy.    

and 
<http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_171-198#Page_172>

*******************

174:4   "The brown jug came out and Ponghill grew 
confessional...[about family] pressures to turn various black sheep 
in as likely candidates or  to protect them from the law."

*******************
174:12   "your own brother"

Ponghill's  mother is upset - Ponghill trusts the lawyers - both 
worry about execution

*******************
174:21  "So Buddy turned in our little brother."
<http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_171-198#Page_173>
The Unabomber was turned in by his brother. ("Kaczynski" means 
'ducky' or 'duckman'.

A tad more: 
<http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/so-where-is-the-unabomber/>