Against the Day, doing some math

[jody1]

Mark-

 "I suggest TRP took this notion, this fear and blew it up into one of the most overarching tropes in Against the Day. In all his math met aphorizing in that great book, i think he uses the concept of imaginary numbers to show another major way modernity dissolved us into groundlessness, so to speak."

The Boys, those Aleatory Aeronauts, put it quite simply: "Going up...it's like going North."  The creation of The Chums is analogous to
the way complex numbers came to be portrayed/graphed on a flat page. The Chums, likewise, are imaginary, but they are no less
real than the "real" characters in the novel, and like "imaginary numbers" they offer a totally unique perspective on "the goings on."

The conflation of "up" and "north" suggests all sorts of attitudes about race and progress in Fin-de-Siecle  America as, for example,
embodied in "The White City;" attitudes, alas, still prevalent today, even in the White House. It reminds me of Slothrop's prototypical
American instinct to ascend after the little demon who stole his clothes- only to fall flat on his ass.