AtDTDA: (8) 229 Smyrna-Casaba line

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

            "He [Mahmoud] was responding as best he could to Clive 
             Crouchmas’s detailed inquiries as to per-kilometer 
             guarantees for various branches and extensions of the 
             Smyrna-Casaba line." 229. 23/25

Here's a bit of background on the Smyrna-Casaba line, taken from an official 
website for Turkish railroads:

The Ottoman Government gave a concession to build and operate a railway from 
Izmir to Cassaba (now Turgutlu) on July 4, 1863. This concession was awarded to 
an English company "the Smyrna Cassaba Railway" (SCR) founded for this purpose 
by Mr. Edward Price. Price was hardly a beginner. He was among the pioneers that 
built railways in England and he worked with distinguished names such as Isanbar 
Brunel and Robert Stephenson. He had also a large overseas experience ranging 
from tunnel construction in Marseilles to bridging the Nile and laying tracks in 
Brazil. . . .

http://www.trainsofturkey.com/w/pmwiki.php/History/SCP

Monte's take on the whole affair is very on:

             Monte Davis:
             I was revisiting some seance and seance-like scenes 
             in earlier Pynchon in light (mamluk-lamp-light) of this 
             one. Notice the multiple distancing:  we do not witness 
             this seance itself. We don't even get the medium's 
             version of it

             "It was something that had come out during the 
             séance tonight, none of which Madame Eskimoff 
             had any direct memory of..."

             Turn the lights up, and what we have here is: 

             1) Eskimoff & Lew & the Cohen reconstructing/interpreting
             2) a "third voice" translation of
             3)... somebody... speaking through a dead Turk named 
             Mahmoud
             4)  who is using Eskimoff's voice...
             5) via an indistinct wax-cylinder recording, which ends with 
             a burst of noise and a Turkish woman's lament...

             And hey presto, we wind up with: "Not always decipherable,” 
             aded the Cohen, “but in this case Eastern-Questionable, 
             beyond a doubt..."

             Actionable intelligence, fer shure. Sign me up for 600+ pages 
             of covert action; Renfrew/Werfner are crazy, but out folks 
             here are on the case.

             Face it, this intel makes the Fall 2002 Follies (holding firm 
             to the Tenets of our Feith) seem like sweet reason itself. 
             And yet P  pulls us along with the prosaic detail -- the 
             mundane specificity of the negotiation is a hoot:

             "He [Mahmoud] was responding as best he could to Clive 
             Crouchmas’s detailed inquiries as to per-kilometer 
             guarantees for various branches and extensions of the 
             Smyrna-Casaba line." 

             Can't you hear the calculator clicking? Mmmm, due 
             diligence through the Veil of Unknowing. 

Something else I'm picking up in this section. The Grand Cohen plays Holmes 
to Lew's Watson,in the process passing on the "British Mystery Tradition" to 
the obvious American inheritors. Others have noted the Lew Archer aspects of 
Lew Basnight, let's not forget Raymond Chandler's soilded Knight, Philip 
Marlowe. Lew Basnight, like both Marlowes, is more than aware enough of 
weird goings-on, he could write a book (or two) if "they'd" only let him

             "From what one gathers," mused the Cohen, 

[and please note how Our Beloved Author reminds us of Gengis Cohen in 
this context, forcing yet another re-reading of the secret formula COL49] 
 
             "though Crouchmas is not the voice of Allah in these 
             matters, far from it, the Ottoman government's 
             kilometric guarantees have lately become so 
             attractive that, as if by miracle, phantom railways 
             are beginning to blossom out in Asia Minor, among 
             those treeless plateaus where not even panthers 
             will venture, linking stations for towns that do not, 
             strictly, exist---sometimes even in name. Which is 
             apparently where the person speaking by way of 
             Mahmoud was located."---end of 229, start of 230

Sounds like Der Platz where Osama Bin Laden is hanging out.