AtDtDA23: It Was a Busy Period of History

[Dave Monroe]

"Philippe was an alumnus of the infamous children's prison in Paris
known as the Petite Roquette, and had gained an early appreciation of
institutional spaces.  He had become especially partial to cathedrals
..." (AtD, Pt. III, p. 658)


Petite Roquette

= little rock

http://laroquette.site.voila.fr/petiteroquette.html

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_de_la_Roquette

La Petite Roquette, situated in Paris, held boys between the ages of
six to sixteen. Here many practices of rehabilitation were carried out
for the young boys, including solitary confinement. The goal of this
new system of punishment for youths was to prevent them from failing
again into a life of crime and to form them into acceptable members of
society so that they could return after their time had been served....

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/thenardier/theresa/roquette.html


"an early appreciation of insititutional spaces"

E.g., ...

Foucault, Michel.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
   Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1977.

http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679752554

Pt. III, Discipline, 3. Panopticism

http://www.cartome.org/foucault.htm
http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html

And see as well, on panopticism and/or the carceral ...

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/disciplinepunish/section7.rhtml
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/disciplinepunish/section10.rhtml
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/newhistoricism/modules/foucaultcarceralmainframe.html


cathedrals

Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904, 1913)

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4584
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=c-QDAAAAYAAJ
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/Adams_Mont/cover.html
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780140390544,00.html


apse

http://m-w.com/dictionary/apse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apse
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01659a.htm
http://www.pitt.edu/~medart/menuglossary/apse.htm


"'what looks solid never is'"

Karl Marx and Friderich Engels,  The Communist Manifesto (1848)

"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and
man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real
conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

Berman, Marshall. All that is Solid Melts into Air:
   The Experience of Modernity.
   New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982.

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780140109627,00.html


Ndih'më! ... Nxito!

Albanian: Help me!...Quickly!

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677#Page_658


"'Hey, Ace!'"

Cf. ...

"here came 'Mr. Ace,' as he called himself." (AtD, Pt.II, pp. 414-5)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0708&msg=120822


"'Better get back to the spital'"

Main Entry: spit·al
Pronunciation: \ˈspi-təl\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English spitel, modification of Medieval Latin
hospitale — more at hospital
Date: 14th century
archaic : lazaretto, hospital

http://m-w.com/dictionary/spital


"a Mannlicher eight-shot"

>From Dallas to Baghdad ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steyr_Mannlicher
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,466284,00.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKSmannlicher.htm
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0702&msg=115510

Mannlicher Automatic Pistol. The Mannlicher 7.63 automatic pistol
Model 1900 ...  featured an eight-round capacity.... (pp. 527-8)

http://books.google.com/books?id=m-XpP_pdANcC&pg=RA2-PA527


bien sûr

French: certainly. Here "Of course it did."

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677#Page_659


"an Albanian never forgets"

Vs. ...

"nobody said they could remember much" (p. 653)?


"showered again, unlocked his private pulley-rope, lowered his clothes
... hung his wet working gear on the hook, raised it again and
padlocked the rope"

At the top of the building steampipes were fixed, and each man was
entitled to his own private rope and padlock; this rope passes over a
pulley in the roof, and has a hook at the end to which he can attach
his day clothes, ... and pulling them up by the cord and padlocking it
he secures the safety of his belongings. On returning from his work he
... has his bath, lowers his clothes, and, hanging his wet mining
dress on the hook, raises it to the roof. Here it hangs until he again
returns to work, when he finds his clothes dry and warm.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1905simplon.html


"didn't look back"

Sodom & Gomorrah motif.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677#Page_659

Vs. Orpeheus and Eurydice?


"It was a busy period of history" (AtD, Pt. III, p. 659)

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the
years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles
in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen,
Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of
the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar
Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly
speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time
of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic
fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the
present day is intended or should be inferred.

[...]

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an
unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to
pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's
their lives that pursue them....

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594201202,00.html
http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day