AtDDtA1: The Hydrogen Skyship Inconvenience

[Dave Monroe]

   "Mark spun the globe and shrugged.  'I don't know. 
If I think the balloon is about to go up I'm going to
send Helen and the kids down here....'"

--Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon (New York: HarperPerennial,
2005 [1959]), p. 16

Cf. ...

balloons

... "Up goes the balloon [slang: war, action, etc. had
begun]," 67; ... "So the balloon's gone up," 232; "the
balloon had gone up", 308; ... "The jolly, jolly
balloon [...] Going up" 434 ...

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/b.html#balloons

   "It was amid such lively exclamation that the
hydrogen airship Inconvenience, its gondola draped
with patriotic bunting [...] ascended briskly into the
morning, and soon caught the southerly wind." (AtD,
Pt. I, p. 3)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0701&msg=114259

As well as ...

"A pose I found congenial in those days--fairly
common, I hope, among pre-adults--was that of somber
glee at any idea of mass destuction or decline.  The
modern political thriller genre, in fact, has been
known to cash in on such visions of death made
large-scale or glamorous." (SL, "Intro," p. 130)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72984

Though Pat Frank of course hardly makes nuclear
holocaust and its aftermath "glamorous" ...


 
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