AtD (28) All the same I'd be looking into, p.794-796

[Mark Kohut]

Paul Nightingale wrote:

If the post-Event Siberian landscape recalls Chicago, the Event's impact
echoing that of capitalist rationalisation, so does the paragraph beginning
on 796. On 14, the gathering of airships: "... the Midwestern summer evening
whose fading light they were most of them too busy quite to catch the
melancholy of", down to "... the evening was thus atwitter, like the trees
of many a street in the city nearby, with aviatory pleasantries". Here, the
absence of "migratory European species" (795), a disruption of the natural
cycle. Then, Ch5 begins by pointing out that the Chicago setting offers the
Inconvenience a perfect disguise: it "would fit right in" etc (36). Here,
the Chums' cry of independence is perhaps undermined, "approach[ing] the
fringes of a great aerial flotilla" (796), again unpopulated, "immense and
crewless". Business as usual, it seems.

The Chums' new Organization has them working and still missing the light of the day, the twitter of birds, etc.....effect of modernity?

Weber's concept of modern industrial rationalization, besides the loss of magic and institutionalization of charisma, has lots of analysis of efficiency and certain positive results, I gather. (I hardly know----maybe one ofour p-listers who does can clarify. [Everything I know I learned from
wikipedia, will be my late-life memoir])

Anyway, this episode lead my reflections in that direction. And toward more
understanding of the ending, maybe?