ATDDTA (6) 175 S 2

[bekah]

Now Lew  (the proton -  the Light Emitting Westerner/weirdo?)  is 
riding along in the open countryside, rangeland, frontier,  whatever 
-  becoming radicalized.

175:4      "At the next convenient rise, he paused and regarded the 
peaceful valley.   Maybe he had not yet seen it all, but Lew would be 
reluctant to wager more than a glass of beer that Chicago, for all 
its urban frenzy, had much on this country out here.  He guessed that 
every cabin, outbuilding, saloon, and farmhouse in his field of sight 
concealed stories that were anything but peaceful - horses of 
immoderate beauty had gone crazy, turned like snakes and taken from 
their riders chunks of body flesh that would never grow back, wives 
had introduced husbands to the culinary delights of mushrooms that 
would turn a silver coin to black, vegetable farmers had shot 
sheepherders over some unguarded slide of the eye, sweet little girls 
had turned overnight into whooping, hollering brides of the 
multitude, obliging men in the family to take actions not always 
conducive to public calm, and, as boilerplate to the contract with 
its fate, the land held the forever unquiet spirits of generations of 
Utes, Apaches, Anasazi, Navajo, Chirakawa, ignored, betrayed, raped, 
robbed and murdered, bearing witness at the speed of the wind, 
saturating the light, whispering over the faces and in and out the 
lungs of the white trespassers in a music toneless as cicadas, 
unforgiving as any graved marked or lost."


I just typed that out because it's so beautifully written in a 
classic western style (only with long sentences)  but briefly very 
different from most of the book.  It's McCarthy-ish/esque There are 
no Luddite  or anarchy sympathies in that passage,  no nostalgia or 
meditation on the frontier, no science, no history,  no 
anti-capitalist sentiments and not much paranoia.   It's just a human 
being looking at some devastating scenery.   Pynchon is not blaming 
the capitalists for the personal difficulties of the people.   At 
this point, Lew seems to be a kind of fulcrum or counter-point or 
balance to the anarchists as well as the capitalists. 

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

175: 32 	 "Only slowly would it occur to his ultra-keen 
detective's reasoning that these bombs could have been set by 
anybody, including those who would clearly benefit if 'Anarchists,' 
however loosely defined, could be blamed for it.  Neither, in the 
course of long pursuits down back of the Yards and beyond, was it 
escaping his attention how desperately miserable were the lives found 
among the realities of Anarchist communion, though it promised a man 
his only redemption from a captivity often cruel as the old Negro 
slavery.  Crueler sometimes..  Lew began to find himself entertaining 
seductive daydreams about picking up some surrogate bomb, a chunk of 
ice... "

Lew is changing.   Thinking about how miserable the lives were for 
those a part of the "Anarchist communion."    But therein lies 
redemption for the worker.   Lew dreams of dynamite  or -  a "chunk 
of ice"?

***********
176:1	"... a frozen pile of horse-droppings., to sling at the next 
silk hat he saw serenely borne along in the street, the next 
unmounted policeman beating an unprotected striker."

Lew thinks back over the Chicago area strikes:

Chicago Stockyards Strike (1904)
<http://www.chicagohs.org/history/stockyard/stock5.html>

Pullman Plant (1894)
<http://www.kansasheritage.org/pullman/index.html>

steel mills (Homestead - 1892)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike>

McCormick Reaper (Haymarket riot)
<http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/1/Haymarket.htm>

The Haymarket massacre did more to radicalize union sympathizers and 
would-be anarchists of the times than any other event in US history.
<http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ichihtml/hayhome.html>

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

176:10 -  "The altitude, the scale of the country out here, put a 
balloonheaded clarity onto vision when directed at mine owners and 
workers alike, revealing the Plutonic powers as they daily sent their 
legions of gnomes underground to hollow out as much of that broken 
domain as they could before the overburden collapsed, often as not on 
top of their heads, though what did it matter to the Powers, who 
always had more dwarves waiting, even eagerly, to be sent below. 
Scabs and Union men, Union and scabs, round and round, changing 
sides, changing back again, sure didn't help with what he felt no 
embarrassment in thinking of as a contest for his soul."


   -  balloonheaded,  as in idealistic?  the  Chums?

**************************
* 176:15  gnomes / dwarves

Pynchon seems to use the terms interchangeably.  No problem.

gnomes - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome>

Norse dwarfs (before time)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf>

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; (The Brothers Grimm, 1812)
<http://www.answers.com/topic/snow-white-fictional-character>

Seven Dwarves (1937 Disney)
Tolkien's dwarves (1937)