ATDTDA (17): "where insomnia prevailed ..." - Part 1 (462.34)

[Tim Strzechowski]

[...] "He found a ramshackle old hotel a block square, the hotel Noctambulo, where insomnia prevailed.  In each room, somebody was staying up working at some impossible midnight project -- a mad inventor, a gambler with a system, a preacher with an only partly-communicable vision.  Doors were left unlocked, strangers acted for the most part like neighbors, everybody free to roam each others' units.  No matter how deep in the morning darkness, Frank found he could always walk in in search of a smoke and conversation.  Down in the courtyard, a festive crowd came and went all night.  Everybody chiseled smokes" (pp. 462 - 63).
 

A passage somewhat reminiscent of Lew Basnight's encounter with the Esthonia Hotel (pp. 38 - 39) and, again, with echos of _Gulliver's Travels_ and Part 3, the "Voyage to Laputa." 
 
In the Pynchon passage, however, the catalog structure is briefer and the residents are much more social.  Here is Swift:

 
[...] I went into another Chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible Stink. My Conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a Whisper to give no Offence, which would be highly resented; and therefore I durst not so much as stop my Nose. The Projector of this Cell was the most ancient Student of the Academy. His Face and Beard were of a pale Yellow; his Hands and Clothes daubed over with Filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close Embrace (a Compliment I could well have excused.) His Employment from his first coming into the Academy, was an Operation to reduce human Excrement to its original Food, by separating the several Parts, removing the Tincture which it receives from the Gall, making the Odour exhale, and scumming off the Saliva. He had a weekly Allowance from the Society, of a Vessel filled with human Ordure about the Bigness of a Bristol Barrel. 

I saw another at work to calcine Ice into Gunpowder; who likewise shewed me a Treatise he had written concerning the Malleability of Fire, which he intended to publish. [...]