Against the Day

[Mark Kohut]

p. 19." the *Siege of Paris*,-- lasting from 19 September 1870 to 28
January 1871, and the consequent capture of the city by Prussian forces,
led to French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War> and the establishment
of the German Empire <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Empire> as well
as the Paris Commune <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune>.---"

this is part of the monologue that PT Anderson gives to The Master in that
movie--is linked to ballooning (because it was in reality)
Pynchon goes on to state overtly.....the modern State from that time, the
time the balloon boys fly away from, started the time of " a permanent
siege"
[in history]. Is this where Pynchon's major "philosophy of history", so to
speak, really begins--in all the works, from V. on.? The modern world is
State-created warfare, so to summarize.

"Historians have labeled the years from 1870-1914 as the period of the *Second
Industrial Revolution*."  The technological revolution. (which we will
experience in examples, starting with this balloon and photography maybe,
in AtD.

Since there was not major *World *Warfare during all that time, the state
of siege phrase seems to mean it is about all trying to survive, make a
living and a life, in the world, esp the US focused on here in* Against the
Day*. Day equals daybreak of the era here, ala Nietzsche?, the beginning)