Chums of Chance

[Joseph Tracy]

 I finished up the final 2/3rds of ATD and got to thinking about the Chums in light of earlier essays I have written on the 3-part layers that I see as fundamental to the structure of P’s writing (History, Fiction, Myth) Below is the written version of my musings. I admit that there is a much darker way to view the Chums. Everything , paticularly in ATD has a shadow or a bi-locational reflection. I plan to take up that aspect and write more about the Chums from that perspective as part 2. My core basis is how Pynchon reifies mythic dimensions in most of his writing: The toilet world or the disappearance of Slothrop into rainbow  in GR, the role of tarot in several books, the underground worlds in V, aliens, godzilla, The Golden Fang. All of these go well outside the bounds of plausible realistic fiction occupied by his main characters.  The obvious truth is that humans need all 3 of these ways of living in and describing our experience of life as  human talkers, thinkers , rememberers, tinkerers, explorers, dreamers.  And one of the things that makes Pynchon’s writing unique is that he freely combines the 'real/scientific/gegraphic/historical', the 'fictive/descriptive', and the 'mythic/subconscious/extradimensional' as the terrain for his novels and that the arc  and scope of his work is huge, covering a large, almost biblical, range of history and ideas. Part of what this does is allow skepticism about how we interpret the phenomena of life without hard denial of strange things that have often turned out to have very scientific or psychological explanations . It leaves many parts of the universe as myterious as they actually are, and lets us ask moral questions  and have a personal response to a given history, story or myth without being tied to a core belief or trying to explain the whole cosmos. 

WHATS UP WITH THE CHUMS OF CHANCE IN PYNCHONS NOVEL, AGAINST THE DAY, AND HOW HIGH CAN YOU FLY WITHOUT MELTING YOUR WINGS ( PART 1)

Of the 3 layers that Pychon uses to simulate human existance within the greater and lesser flows of time and awareness (History, Fiction, Myth) no layer is truly separate from the others and some of the key characters interact deeply with all 3. In Against the Day such are Miles Blundell, Cyprian Latewood, Igor Padzhitnoff, Professor Vanderjuice, Yashmeen, Lew Basnight, the Traverse Family, Wren,  El Espinero among a few others. 
 
The Chums of Chance, like Shambala, like the reptilians buried in the ice and occupying the darker memories of indiginous shamans, like the Pythagoreans and Angels of Mexico, Venice and the Bible, are clearly occupying a mythical layer of reality. They glide above the world in dirigibles like our mythic dreams of an heroic inner self.  However, unlike the uchanging achetypes of more ancient myths, The Chums occupy a peculiarly changing mythography, and that quality of change is worthy of thought as is their overall role in the scheme of the novel .
 
In considering The Chums literary roots, a fairly obvious logic leads back to the fairy and folk tales  that are common in all cultures and seem to be primarily directed at pre-adult members of the society. These stories have many roles: teaching children to beware of predatory adults, to rely on their personal skills, wits and instincts, to align themselves with spirit and trusted companions, to have courage, to be kind to strangers, to regard with respect nature’s allies and simply to entertain or distract children and youth… Those are some of the better messages. Some themes are more ambiguous, like the many stories in which an ordinary person uses their gifts and charm to enter the palaces of royalty and change their status, wealth, and power.  Some reinforce blatant lies about inheritance and the goodness of rulers.  War is rarely part of stories for youth, though messages about war do filter down to the young  from the core adult myths in every “civilization” where training, loyalty and service  to the chiefain, state or empire is the practical key to personal advancement and survival. In the boys adventure stories from the turn of the century, the battles tend to be with criminals, scientists gone bad, or aleins rather than war.  
  
The Chums at the start of the novel are in the mode of  boys adventure  fiction, a 19th to 20th-century technologically empowered version of the boy-oriented jack tales or the knights of the round table.  With titles like Chums of Chance Search for Atlantis, Chums of Chance and the Curse of the Yellow Fang, their past adventures tend to refer to and to reinforce the cultural prejudices of white settler colonialism, or the dreams of daring raids beyond the fringes of civilization. As is common in the American idealism, this inherent violence is masked, sincerely in the case of the Chums, with high ideals from Christianity and a comfortable distance from the earth below. But  these ideals are suspect in that they seem to primarily emerge in ego squabbles and rules  disputes without shared concensus. It is more of an authoritarian secular religious order than a democracy.  The Chums at this stage do not question who they serve or what are the motives of their creator/masters. They are the stories we, or increasingly not us personally but the media, tell our children, with many realities left out, Disney stories.
  
If one were to name names and map the chums onto current history, one might think of Bezos, Jobs, , Musk, Thiel, Gates and Zuckerburg who have sailed into the stratosphere of wealth and influence on the technopowers of software and electronics. Frequently thay were introduced to the public as brainy boy wonders ala Tom Swift.  They made useful and potentially democratizing tools, but more and more they get big contracts as spies, weapons guidance and security sytems for capitalism and empire. Despite sordid connections to global violence and ecodevastation these technologies have aquired mythic status as the key to a better world.  
  
But while Pynchon uses the Chums to parody  our modern adventure stories and their cultural parallels, he has chosen to steer them in a different direction from pure satire. They are destined to grow and change in ways that parallel their Russian counterparts and the more conventional fictional characters like the Traverses, Yashmeen or Foley.  The process of this change is worth watching to understand Pynchon’s intent. I think it begins with the latest addition to the original chums, Chick Counterfly, a black youth with urban sensibilties who the chums rescue from KKK types, and who brings in underclass street sense and smartass defiance of authority, but also integrates into the practical skillsets and collective intelligence of the Chums.  As soon as a society (or some of its members) embraces and work in solidarity with those who have been seen as subhuman or threats, that society (or person) changes in the direction of empathy and a larger worldview.  The other influences bringing questions and change are the compassion and visionary sensitivity of Miles Blundell, the youthful questioning of Darby Suckling, and the friendly connection of the Chums  to Igor Padzhitnoff.  These characters, along with issues emerging from their adventures, cause the Chums to question and finally cut ties to their managers, who have an imperial bent and presumption of authority without reciprocal democratic feedback. Their airship then expands toward a larger crew and mission.
   
 Some might see this as simply a kind of self-interested corporate breakaway, but when they make this move the Chums suddenly become aware of the horrors of the world war destroying the earth below and are soon involved in humanitarian efforts to aid the victims.  
 
The final big change comes when the chums meet female balloonist counterparts and begin to marry. It is as though men can no longer keep their incomplete, above the earth perspective to themselves. 
   
 Part of the point of the changes in the Chums has to do with the role myth plays in human consciousness and history. Our civilizations have lived out mythic structures that are agonistic, patriarchal, colonialist and self flattering. They led to a worldview that was able to consider the events leading toward the darkest war in human history as a “Great Game”.  These myths are persistent and deeply embedded even though they point toward apocalypse. Perhaps, the book seems to ask, we have gone as far into hell as we need go.  The Chums scribe a slow arc away from these patterns and offer a way in which human creativity and empathy  can offer a more flexible open source spirituality. After all, myths, like the chums, are made by the artfulness of the human imagination. Anarchist golf anyone? 

JOSEPH TRACY