AtDtDA(28): Brodyagi

Thu Mar 20 15:44:02 CDT 2008

"Kit menatime had fallen in with a band of brodyagi ..." (AtD, Pt. IV, p. 788)

brodyagi

This entire passage is a reference to Don Quixote, namely the incident
with Gines de Pasamonte and the galley slaves. In Don Quixote, Gines
acts as a metafictional representation of Cervantes, as well as a
symbol of the author/writer. Here, Topor acts as Gines, representing
TRP (notice the name similarity). The hallucinogenic mushrooms
represent the Quixote--with a two part narrative, the fir novels,
generally. The urine-drinking seems to be a crack at literary critics
and literature st pleasant and wonderous, the second full of
horrors--as well as AtD andfans who write about books and read what
others write--essentially, drinking each other's urine: the
after-products of the consumption of books.

brodyagi

Russian: tramps.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_788

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote (1605)

http://www.donquixote.com/english.html

Ch. XXIII

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Don_Quixote/Volume_1/Chapter_XXIII

"internal exile"

Increasing polarization of public opinion followed the increased
commitment of American troops in Vietnam, and Lot 49 seemed to gain
weight, to become more grave. It is possible the novel could have
taken on the aura of sedition in the eyes on Nixon's somewhat
unpredictable (later convicted felon) Attorney General John Mitchell.
Was Siegel onto something? New York Jets' free-wheeling quarterback
Joe Namath was on Nixon's enemies' list, though for what was hard to
tell. Was Pynchon, too, on the list of the proscribed? We may never
know. He did sign a full-page anti-war ad, along with hundreds of
well-respected people opposed to the escalating war, in the New York
Review of Books (15 Feb. 1969: 9). Natalie Robins has documented that
Thomas R. Pynchon, Jr., was on the FBI's Index, a list of people known
to be unfriendly to government policies on whom the FBI kept active
dossiers. Pynchon's name appears among hundreds of "Writers, Editors,
Agents and Publishers Indexed by the FBI because they signed Civil
Rights and/or Anti-war Protests during the 1960s" (411). Enemies
lists, watch lists, Chaos, Cointelpro, Shamrock, Minaret; mail
openings, telephone taps, direct surveillance, breaking and entering,
and stealing files: it appeared American politics could get now worse.
Pynchon had already opted to live as a stranger in his own strange
land....

http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm#chap_0
http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm

... the whole concept of the Tristero seems to derive linguistically
from a reference in Eliot's The Waste Land to "le Prince d'Aquitaine a
tour nobile" (line 430 [sic--try line 429]).  This line itself bears a
cryptic reference to Gerard de Nerval's poem "El
Deschidado," in which most of the major themes of the Tristero are
sounded (the exile into a shadowy, marginal world; the former prince
whose "tower" has been "abolished"; the "black sun of melancholia").
Nerval's poem, in turn, takes its titles from the motto on the shield
of the mysterious Disinherited Knight who turns up at the beginning of
Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, and who will eventually represent both the
Saxons and the Jews evicted from their estates by Norman chivalry....

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=65233
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0311&msg=87452

... Lot 49 itself suggests the analogy between the crisis in
mid-sixties America and a crisis in Roman history by giving us, late
in the novel, Dr. Diocletian Blobb.  Why bring in this name after all
that has gone on before?  Diocletian was a Roman emperor (284-305 CE)
whose reign marked a change in government....

http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm#chap_6
http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm

In order to curb extensive corruption in the imperial postal system,
which always
was tantamount to conspiracy against the empire, Diocletian created an
imperial secret service, the scola agentum in rebus, and placed the
postal administration under its authority.  Eventually, under
Theodosius and Honorius, the use of the postal system by private
persons was even punished by death.  Since
the network of the cursus publicus was coextensive with the orbis
terrarum, banishment to Pontus meant being transported beyond the
limes of the world for
Ovid.  While the Tristia are laments over the loss of postal
connections, the Epistulae ex Ponto use the medium of literature to
decry the catastrophe in the
postal system.
   Postal systems are instrumenta regni....

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=58991

Tristia ('Sadness') is a work of poetry, in five books, written by the
Roman poet Ovid at some time after he was banished from Rome in AD
8....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristia

Parve--nec invideo--sine me, liber, ibis in urbem,
  ei mihi, quo domino non licet ire tuo!
vade, sed incultus, qualem decet exulis esse;
  infelix habitum temporis huius habe.  --Ovid, Tristia, I.i.1-4

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.tristia1.shtml
http://www.tonykline.co.uk/PITBR/Latin/OvidTristiaBkOne.htm

In one respect Augustine's sentence had been lenient: Ovid was not
legally exiled
but "relegated", hence not deprived in property or citizenship.
Otherwise it meant the loss of everything that had made life worth
living, the brilliant cosmopolitan society of Rome.  Ahead lay nothing
but solitude, boredom, discomfort, and danger--a living death.

What had Ovid done to deserve this?  The secret has been well kept,
and all we know is what he chose to tell us in his poetry.  It is
perhaps natural to assume that the real cause of the offence was what
he calls his indiscretion (error), an involuntary involvement in some
scandal intimately affecting the imperial house.  The other count
against him, a poem (carmen), the Ars Amatoria, looks at first sight
like a pretext ....  True, Ovid had in it administered more than one
pinprick to official Augustan myths, but can Augustine really thought
it so subversive of contemporary morals ... to deserve such draconian
punishment?

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=58991

the Trakt

The Siberian Route (Russian: Sibirsky trakt, Сибирский тракт), also
known as the Moscow Route (Moskovsky trakt, Московский тракт) and
Great Route (Bolshoi trakt, Большой тракт), was a historic route that
connected European Russia to Siberia and China....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Route

"a Siberian short-ax genius known only as 'Topor'"

"Topor"

Russian: The Ax.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_788

Cf. ...

Main Entry: tor·por
Pronunciation: \ˈtȯr-pər\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin, from torpēre
Date: 13th century

1 a: a state of mental and motor inactivity with partial or total
insensibility b: a state of lowered physiological activity typically
characterized by reduced metabolism, heart rate, respiration, and body
temperature that occurs in varying degrees especially in hibernating
and estivating animals
2: apathy, dullness

synonyms see lethargy

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/torpor

Tyrone Slothrop

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/slothrop-t.html

June 6, 1993
The Deadly Sins/Sloth; Nearer, My Couch, to Thee
By THOMAS PYNCHON

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-sloth.html

Topor, torpor, TRP ...

"threatening government officials, and so forth"

Natalie Robins has documented that Thomas R. Pynchon, Jr., was on the
FBI's Index, a list of people known to be unfriendly to government
policies on whom the FBI kept active dossiers...

http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm#chap_0
http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm

"like reincarnation"

http://skepdic.com/reincarn.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation
http://www.comparativereligion.com/reincarnation.html

E.g., ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara

"the holy wanderers that Yashmeen had told him about"

   "'In Russia, when I was a small child,' Yashmeen continued after a
while, 'I should not remember it now, but I do, wanderers,
wild-looking men, came to our doors seeking shelter as if they were
entitled to it,  They were the stranniki--" (AtD, Pt. III, pp. 662-3)

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0712&msg=123364

Paert, Irinia.  "Preparing God's Harvest: Maksim Zalesskii,
   Millenarianism,  and the Wanderers in Soviet Russia."
   Russian Review 64 (1) (2005): 44-61.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9434.2005.00346.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=russ

A-and spaceeba again, Ya Sam ...

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0712&msg=123367
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0802&msg=124733

"a steam distillery"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_distillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillation#Steam_distillation

Fusel oils

Cf. p. 756

Fusel alcohols, also sometimes called fusel oils, or potato oil in
Europe, are higher order (more than two carbons) alcohols formed by
fermentation and present in cider, mead, beer, wine, and spirits to
varying degrees. The term fusel is German for "bad liquor."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusel_oil

"strange mottled red mushrooms"

Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly Amanita, is
a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the
genus Amanita. Native throughout the temperate and boreal regions of
the Northern Hemisphere, Amanita muscaria has been unintentionally
conveyed to many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, generally as a
symbiont with pine plantations, and is now a true cosmopolitan
species. It associates with various deciduous and coniferous trees.
The quintessential toadstool, it is a large imposing white-gilled,
white-spotted, usually deep red mushroom, one of the most recognizable
and widely encountered in popular culture. Though generally considered
poisonous, Amanita muscaria is otherwise famed for its hallucinogenic
properties with its main psychoactive constituent being the compound
muscimol. The mushroom has had a religious significance in Siberian
culture and possibly also in ancient Indian and Scandinavian cultures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Amanita_muscaria_3_vliegenzwammen_op_rij.jpg
http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_788

"Siberias of the soul"

This (two-part) structure, "_____s of the ____", is familiarly
Pynchonian, I think, I just can't conjure up any other examples, is
all.  Help!

"a two-part structure to the narrative"

Bi-located?  And note as well ...

... he was extremely exacting about his writing techniques: "You know,
Bruce, those high school biology texts with centerfold transparencies,
first the skeleton, and then the muscles...well this is the technique
I use for writing." ...

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_biography.html

"they drank one another's urine"

Shamanistic practice also observed in some "mystery" religions. The
person who ingests the drug (e.g., toxic mushroom) partly metabolizes
it and excretes it; followers can get a, hrmm, watered-down dose by
drinking his urine. Source: The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross by John
M. Allegro (1970).

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_788

Cf. ...

"We drank the blood of our enemies. The blood of our friends, we
cherished." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 739)

"a link between the Trans-Siberian and the Taklamakan"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan_Desert

Bruce Sterling, "Taklamakan" (1998)

http://www.lib.ru/STERLINGB/taklamakan.txt