ATDDTA (6) 175 S 2

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

> **************************
> 
> 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

I am more and more taken with the notion of connecting this passage
with the Chums' adventure in Chthonica.  
Leading to a disorderly rhizome of thoughts:
Chums in the Bowels ->  Vineland 

we don't know the title of the Chums adventure that they are
having inside AtD, do we?

miners/unions/struggles viewed as dwarves, downplayed in Vineland
as versus the primacy of Frenesi's psyche

Pynchon per his recent letter to the editor thinks of himself
as an historical novelist

"a balloonheaded clarity" maybe giddy, having to breathe
harder in the altitude, feeling like one's head is distended,
ready to float away, lightweight, subject to the wind?

Still, this seems most clearly to be a pointer to the Chums
...and to the ambiguities and difficulties an historical novelist
would face in interpreting the Troubles...