AtDTDA: [38] p. 1085 They fly towards grace.

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

This is gonna be off the top of my head. A great deal of my 
postings have featured other people's opinions and no matter how 
misguided my exegesis might be, it does come out of reading 
everything publicly available from the author. A linch-pin for 
Against the Day is "The Secret Integration", a story I read just 
once, one I resisted for decades in spite of "Slow Learner" being 
in my collection for decades. "The Secret Integration" concerns
itself with a small band of young adventuring buddies. It's concerned
with various degrees of the fictitious.

The Chums of Chance come from the land of pure fiction, their
fictions are used by that overarching "Them" that kindly offers
up themselves as the bad guys in all of Pynchon's books. The
Dues ex mechina actions the Chums provide serve in part to
offer up the fiction that a "God" is overseeing the Chums
comings and goings. And in this fiction, he very might well be.
But again and again and again Against the Day concerns itself
with fictions—the wonderful phrase "The Exact Degree of 
Fictitiousness" is very much the point of Against the Day,
with its constantly shifting tone, multiplicity of narratorial
and character voices. Even more to the point is the widespread 
display of "Imaginary" numbers and number relations, the 
Quartenions in particular. 

Pynchon is tracking and mapping varieties of fiction emergent
in the era twixt Victoria and the so-called "Modern Age." Lew
Basnight's narrative moves from Sherlock Holmes to Ross
McDonald. The Traverse narratives are all over the map. The 
only narratives that maintain the same Exact Degree of 
Fictitiousness are the Chums, and why not? These "Swift" 
adventure stories doubtless point to a life-long love of serials
and other open-ended narratives. The Chums are as eternal
[and 'real'] as Bugs Bunny.

"Flying towards grace", like "Imaginary Numbers" is an
unresolveable paradox, along with being a heresy—a
particular area of interest for the author, doubtless in 
part due to family history. Protestant grace is purest
unobtainium, one cannot reach for grace, works don't 
count in Calvinist grace, it just happens [but only if you 
have the right, the true, the only "way".] Buddhist grace
comes out of compassion, one can steer one's craft in 
that direction. But Pynchon's first ideas on grace must
have been shaped by his forebearers, like William 
Pynchon, founder of Springfield Mass. 

So a fictional craft, run by a fictional crew has a 
hyper-fictional trajectory, one of those resolutions that
can only happen in fairy tales and suchlike.

"But wait, there's more!" As someone pointed out, Pynchon
really does qualify as a Rocket Scientist and a lot of Pynchon's
writings concern themselves with the sciences of aviation 
and chemistry and physics. A lot of Gravity's Rainbow
concerned itself with good old fashioned calculus. Against
the Day is concerned with scientific thought occupying the 
fringes of reason, but now in regular, practical use in our 
quotidian lives. Quartenions, complex combos of complex 
numbers are all over the book. And the notion of the Multiverse
pops up regularly in AtD, particularly when the Chums are 
around. Yesterday, while rummaging around for material
on string theory and the the multiverses I found a reference
to Giordano Bruno as one of the first to conceive of an
"Infinite Universe." He was rewarded for his efforts  with
a particularly grisly public execution. I noted that Bruno
was a Dominican Monk. A buzzer went off in my head,
I turned to The Crying of Lot 49 for the relevant passage
and noted that the name of that unfortunate soul whose 
tongue was torn out for his heresies was named Dominico.

The central heresy of the multiverse is that scarcity is a
fiction. Which brings us back to anarchy.

Perhaps the most important "word" in Pynchon's fictions
is "&" [probably followed by ","] The Chums Fly Towards
Grace and they are blinded by the light, wait, no they've
got goggles on, but they are drawn towards light and certain
annihilation, no . . . .

          . . . .As the sails of her destiny can be reefed 
          against too much light, so they may also be spread 
          to catch a favorable darkness. Her ascents are 
          effortless now. It is no longer a matter of gravity—it 
          is an acceptance of sky. . . .

All praise to Scheherazade, the Stupendica sails at dawn.