Busted Time Machines And Harmonica Madness

[Dave Monroe]

Monday, April 09, 2007
Busted Time Machines And Harmonica Madness

Yippy dippy dippy,
Flippy zippy zippy,
Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!

(pp. 397-428)


[...]


At Candlebrow, an enormous university underwritten by the vast fortune
of Gideon Candlebrow, inventor of Smegmo, an all-purpose condiment,
and hair product, made from rendered pork, the Time Conference is in
full swing (indeed, it has the trappings of an eternal event) and the
Chums again meet up with their old pal Prof. Vanderjuice. With him
they visit the town dump and there see heaps of scrapped time
machines. At the low saloon down by the river, the boys are dismayed
when a young patron asks if they're looking for Meatman, then turns
color and vanishes. Daunted at this, all leave except Chick
Counterfly, who waits for Meatman (for it was he) to reappear.

Alonzo leads Counterfly to an older, gas-lit part of town, explaining
he knows a conduit there by which mysterious beings make known certain
desires which he is employed to fulfill. In a suite of vacant rooms in
a block of vacant buildings, Meatman introduces Chick to "Mr. Ace",
who says that he is a refugee from a destitute and broken future, the
end of the capitalistic experiment, an emigrant across the forbidden
interval of time trying to aid the migration of others.

Mr. Ace tells Chick that the Chums have unwittingly been used to
frustrate the entry of these future beings at several points across
the globe, and then offers a deal: If the Chums aid the invisible
others through the barrier of time, they will compensate the Chums
with the secret of eternal youth.

After reporting back to the Chums, who seem interested in the deal,
Chick brings Miles Blundell to his next meeting with Mr. Ace, relying
on Miles' second sight to suss out the truth of the matter. Miles
starts weeping at the first sight of Mr. Ace, intuiting his true
intentions and warning (417:19) Assuredly, he does not have our best
interests in mind. Miles also sees other beings, through, he tells
Chick, something like windows. What's more, they see him too and begin
pointing this thing back at him, not exactly a weapon--an enigmatic
object, he, kind of, explains.

Indeed, psychic interference by the Trespassers soon causes the Chums
to undergo a strange transformation (as does, we're told, the whole
Chums of Chance network), becoming without realizing it the Marching
Academy Harmonica Band, students of the Harmonica Band Marching
Academy, an alternate of Candlebrow U. They hallucinate entering and
attending the Academy, a revery which culminates in a hot musical
number where all sing and dance about the AWOL 'Zo Meatman.

'Zo, we learn, had met earlier that day with the Commandant of the
school, a wrinkled, white-haired, gold-toothed martinet keen on
controlling his students' every moment. Alonzo is paid for his work as
an informer and, meeting over, leaves the premises, apparently never
to be seen again.

Meanwhile the spell on the Chums begins to lift. (It is unclear if it
has been in force for hours or weeks.) First they doubt they are
harmonica players. Then they wonder if they are really just readers of
the Chums of Chance adventure series, left behind on Earth as
surrogates for the true Chums. In doing so, they dream of meeting
those real Chums, hosting a dinner for them followed by a harmonica
recital.

Gradually, after a certain release from longing, they walk to the edge
of an unnamed small town and find sky ready, brightwork gleaming [. .
.] as if they had never been away, the Inconvenience and Pugnax,
barking with unrestrained joy.

No sooner have the Chums returned to themselves then they're visited
by that Alonzo Meatman, who brings the Sfinciuno Itinerary and a
warning to await orders. These promptly arrive via the Tesla Device,
directing them to proceed to Bukhara, in Central Asia, to rendezvous
with the Saksal, a British frigate that sails under desert sand,
commanded by one Capt. Q. Zane Toadflax.

Needing, of course, under-sand diving suits, the Chums are brought to
inventor Roswell Bounce by their mutual friend, Prof. Vanderjuice.
Bounce is happy to sell them the needed Hypops units, undercutting the
price of those available from the Vibe Corp., including one especially
modified for Pugnax.

So supplied, the Inconvenience flies eastward, leaving Candlebrow U.
behind, along with the Mysteries of Time to those with enough of that
commodity to devote to their proper study.

So ends Iceland Spar. Bilocations dead ahead.

I hope you Chumps will forgive me for saying that I think these are
the strangest fucking 30 pages our Mad Lad has put down since the
controversial ending of Gravity's Rainbow. Signifiers and subjunctive
clauses abound. I noted a nod to Burroughs (William, that is, not
Edgar Rice) in Meatman's disappearing stunt at the bar (very Nova
Express), the air of Lovecraft in the utterly creepy description of
the time-dead rooms (pg 414) where Mr. Ace comes and goes, a feeling
for Arnold's Dover Beach (the continuous roar as of the ocean 404:11)
in that view from the Time Machine, and something of the end of the
Nestor chapter of Ulysses, in which Stephen Dedalus listens to the old
school master Deasy in his office, next to an open window, as he
natters on about Irish cattle and the Jews. Like 'Zo, Stephen gets
paid and walks away. And then there're those worn out Asimov
Transeculars seen in the town dump (I love, love, love that!) Less
interesting to me is Smegmo, a very sophomoric joke aptly nestled in a
collegiate setting.

But only a master can pull this shit off, and I suggest interested
parties pay attention to how Pynchon uses the nearly interior
narrative voice in the Marching Band passage to arrange events and
create a sense of mystery in the reader's mind as to what's going on.
As if is a favored construction, used deftly enough to almost
disappear, along with Were they, Perhaps even, may really, Had they,
and some would. It is a precise use of imprecision, and it casts a
strange spell.

Speaking of, note that on the way to Zoot's lab, Darby and Chick pass
a memorial landmark of the devastation wrought on New York by the
creature of the Vormance expedition, passing through the gate
proclaiming THE DOLEFUL CITY, seen first on page 154.

And Mr. Ace? Miles, we are told, cries like a cleric seeing God when
he meets him. From this we may infer that Mr. A. has a creative
authority over the Chums, though whether he is meant to be the author
of the Chums of Chance adventure series, or the author of the whole
Against the Day shooting match, I will leave for others to kick
around.

http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/04/busted-time-machines-and-harmonica.html