AtDDtA(15): He Is Not What He Says He Is

[Dave Monroe]

   "'I recognized him, Chick,' said Miles forthrightly, when they had
returned to the ship.  'From somewhere else.  I knew he was real and
couldn't be wished away.  He is not what he says he is.  Assuredly he
does not have our best interests in mind.'
   "'Miles, you must tell me.  Where have you seen him?'
   "'By way of these visual conduits that more and more seem to find
me in the course of my day....'" (AtD, Pt. II, p. 417)


"He is not what he says he is"

Again, what IS he, then?  Help (again)!


"visual conduits," "windows"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser ?

Cf. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_and_Marty


"tresspassers"

Presumably individuals in the company of Mr. Ace and Alonzo Meatman,
whose intentions toward the Chums of Chance are apparently sinister
and for their own benefit. They appear to travel back through the
stream of time without any kind of permission to execute their plans,
thus making them trespassers (or parasites).

The idea of trespass could be thought of in another way too. Miles
mentions Mr. Ace knowing him as a 'peeper' who observes the
trespassers as they come to his time. We could think of the
'trespassers' as anyone in any time who looks back at a point in
history. As such, they are actually 'peepers'. That these seem to have
found a way not just to peep but actually to participate makes them
more than peepers, in fact, it is this that constitutes their
'trespass'.

Pynchon seems to be playing with how we view history and the past, a
theme common to all his work. The Chums, whose existence is, to an
extent, fictional even within the work of fiction, are a nexus meant
to control boundaries between points in time (e.g. the future and the
present, or its past). Historians and other future observers want to
use the past for their own purposes. If they become visible to the
people in that past, they will appear as 'trespassers' and violators.
As Miles says, they do "not have our best interests in mind".

We ourselves (readers and perhaps even more, Wiki authors) are also
trespassers from the standpoint of the Chums. We read about them in
the novel, which takes us to the past, to their present, and inserts
us in a way that is invisible to them. We then write up entries and
think thoughts about what they do. We are in their world in some way
that to them is utterly mysterious and sinister because, again, we
have own agendas in mind and not theirs.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_397-428#Page_417


"'pointing something back at me--not exactly a weapon--an enigmatic object ...'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursor_%28computers%29 ?


"they cross over"

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/interface.html