ATDTDA (3) One interesting compound, 75-79

[Monte Davis]

Let's get this over with.

Dishforth's Illustrated Weekly: Celebrity journalism enters the scene, as
new printing technologies make big runs feasible and "some new kind of
gravure process" adds impact.

http://www.well.com/user/art/maghist02.html (and three subsequent pages)

***

"Erlys, who had always been beautiful, was way beyond all that now. Years of
bitterness about how little she had loved him sloughed away."

This seems formally comparable to Dally, three pages earlier, becoming
"ready to forgive" other cities for not being the Chicago 1893 of her
memories.

***

"battery cells dry and wet, electromagnets, burners..." another Pynchonian
catalogue, overlapping with GR's  "old, old electro-decor-variable
capacitors of glass, kerosene for a dielectric, brass plates and ebonite
covers, Zeiss galvanometers with thousands of fine-threaded adjusting
screws, Siemens milliammeters set on slate surfaces" (518)

***

Webb enters as a voice, possibly that of "back-country insanity." But
shortly he and Merle tiptoe (

"a wary look"
"Merle...feeling his way"
"Merle, with a fair idea where this was going..."
"Careful"
"some wariness in his tone"
"Webb let his eyes slide around"
"Merle said carefully"
"No need to mention my name"

to a congenial shared interest -- not so much in alchemy, but in areas for
which alchemy provides a Rosetta Stone, no harder to decipher than William
Jennings Bryan's "cross of gold" speech at the height of the battle over
bimetallism.

http://www.micheloud.com/FXM/MH/Crime/crime.htm
http://douglassarchives.org/brya_a26.htm

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