ATDTDA (3) High-radius concussion, 86-91

[Monte Davis]

"One night in Shorty's Billiard Saloon..."

A contributor at Chumps of Choice (bless you, A.A.) has turned up several
pages of great Colorado saloon photos from the period:
http://photoswest.org/exhib/faves/saloonsintro.htm

It's always worth playing close attention when Pynchon juxtaposes
deterministic physical processes and metaphors, like the flight of bullets,
like "a chain of similar explosions across a table," like "stripes and
solids on the pool table of earthly existence" --

With aimless, disconnected, and not noticeably free-willing people: Webb
"found himself... confused"... Gatlin "not looking for uninstructed
souls"... "offfhanded preacherly drivel"..."ignored by the bustle..."

In Gatlin's sermon, "outward and audible" echoes the phrase "outward and
visible" that Pynchon uses so often. It's traceable back through a thousand
uses in Christian rhetoric to St. Augustine: "The sacraments are outward and
visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and
certain means by which we receive that grace."
http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/sacramen.htm

For example, coming up on p. 655: "Leaving the Südbahn, [Yashmeen] gazed
backward at iron convergences and receding signal-lamps. Outward and visible
metaphor, she thought, for the complete ensemble of  'free choices' that
define the course of a human life." 

It's doubtless pure coincidence that instead of "set" or "sequence" of
choices, Pynchon uses "ensemble" -- which, oddly enough, was also J. Willard
Gibbs' term of art in statistical mechanics for a set of systems in which
bouncing particles exchange energy. Kinda like a saloon full of pool tables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_ensemble

***
"The Civil War, which ate up a good part of Webb’s boyhood, split the family
as well, so that shortly before it was over, he found himself in the back of
a wagon heading west, about the same time other Traverse Irreconcilables
were choosing to head for Mexico."

The "other" implies that Webb himself was unreconciled to-- what?  And in
case you didn't get it: "But, hell—same thing." Keep these
"irreconcilables," the sore losers of the Confederacy, in mind when European
"irredentists" come up later.

Whatever Webb's problem is, young love provides no answer. "He might have
stayed...""She might have found a way..." But they didn't. Instead, he
enters a prolonged purgatory among "unholy mountains.... poisoned
mountains." There's a sardonic edge to Mayva's  "Nice to see this married
life ain’t slowing you down, Honey” -- as indeed to a large proportion of
the exchanges between them Pynchon gives us.  

The idyll, the acme of their domestic bliss? "They had maybe a year or two
where it wasn’t too desperate." How much of this life was imposed on them by
hard times in a hard landscape? How much was something Webb would have found
wherever he went?

***
"...the family moved around a lot, down to Huerfano County for a while to
dig coal, while Ed Farr was still sheriff, before he got shot by train
robbers..."

Yep, that's two movies' worth: Butch, Sundance, and the Wild Bunch. Many
accounts online, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Bunch 
will do. "The pursuit by a well led posse, led by Sheriff Ed Farr culminated
in two gun battles, which resulted in Sheriff Farr and two deputies being
killed."

Our first signs of the temperaments of the four Traverse schildren come from
how each handles dynamite. Blood (and nitro) will tell. And if there's
anything more low-key scary than Reef's squint ("you learned to take care"),
it's Lake, "maybe smiling some to herself, the way she had begun to do."

Fuses are being lit already -- but it's a long book. We have, as Webb never
did, the simple luxury of time.


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