ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

                        . . . .the song contains a hint of the forboding which has 
                attended every mention of the Vormance Expedition so far:

                For we sail
                With no sure returning,
                Into winds
                That will freeze the soul

                . . . What are we to make of the fact that the Vormance 
                Expedition,  in early mentions, is routinely spoken of in 
                terms which suggest that the reader already knows what 
                will eventually become of it?

Well, the Vormance Expedition is AtD's 9/11. When the "metorite" rolls into 
town, around page 150, I'm sure we'll get into more detail, but the 
"Vormance Expedition" is Pynchon's vision of 9/11, moved into the 
time zone and period ambience of Against the Day..

                And although this assumed foreknowledge may be just a 
                narrative technique, I think it might also be linked to the 
                broader question of fictional worlds and whether the world 
                of Against the Day is intended to be our own world, 'with a 
                minor adjustment or two', or an entirely fictional one, or - as                 
                seems likely - there are a number of coexisting worlds. 

The latter option is taken by Michael Moorcock, a specialist in such fictions.

                . . . .Theosophists, international spies, magicians, painters, 
                beautiful adventuresses and secret societies (for a fuller 
                list read the author’s own description at Amazon) are all 
                involved in an increasingly metaphysical Great Game 
                across the multiverse, from Kathmandu to Colorado to 
                Cambridge, Contra-Earth to Contra-Earth. . . .

http://www.multiverse.org/fora/showthread.php?p=80437

                There are any number of instances throughout the book 
                where we might pause and wonder about this, and of course 
                the most obvious case is the Chums and their balloon, 
                whether the Chums are 'real' people, whose adventures 
                are turned into fiction by the narrator who speaks of his 
                'harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo'.  Or are the Chums, 
                within the fictional world of the book, fictional?

I made a post this morning for page 117 (the paragraph John didn't 
quite get to yet) concerning, this 'harmless little intraterrestrial 
scherzo', jumping off first into metafiction and then extrapolating
into various places you would (might?) wander around in that context.

                Tying this back in to the Vormance episode, there's a 
                sense in which the whole expedition and its aftermath 
                seem to exsist in their own, oddly discrete little bubble. 
                Certainly such a cataclysmic occurance (with all its 
                modern day overtones) would, you'd expect, have 
                some kind of felt effect on the rest of the novel's fictional 
                world, but I don't think - please someone check! - that 
                the Vormance events are much mentioned anywhere else
                in the book?

There is an echo in the Tunguska event, later on. These are all 
events that seem to sub-divide time, with everything before the 
"event" managing to "change everything" in the event's aftermath.
And then there's always the next crisis, isn't there?