Back to AtD. Finding It. pp.952-955

[Mark Kohut]

R.U.S.H. cyclists in leather fatigues on four-cylinder touring bikes lead Reef & Cyprian to It.
Bad Bad dudes which someone on the wiki kinda half-sources to some in Cocteau's Orphee which
also can remind of those black-clad figures on horseback back in AtD and elsewhere in literature..
Death figures riding..image in Rime of Ancient Mariner and many other places, I'm sure.
 
In this section P updates to bikes consistent with his modernist savaging, echoing The Wild Ones and 
other biker movies surely......
 
In the definitive annotation of Against the Day, of all of Pynchon, when like the Arden editions of Shakespeare
virtually every word is nodded at, glossed if necessary and given historical context, at least, I suggest that 
"touring bikes" will carry words to this effect: a reference to the tourist section of V. and P's vision of how
modern "homelessness" [sociologists' sense] exacerbates our destructive tendencies.......
 
Every word matters with P. as I have repeated re this reading, and why else would he not simply write
"bikes"? 
 
Notice how these R.U.S.H. cyclists are now 'one their own' [p. 951]after the death of Theign? A foreecho of 
the Chums' independence? and a textual theme that such evil is now ..everywhere, anywhere, free-wheeling? 
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