The Bedside Crow

Against the Day a page a day#8

Now where were we?

Enter Professor Heino Vanderjuice of Yale University, longtime friend and mentor of the Chums of Chance, and his pilot Ray Ipsow. Vanderjuice has come to Chicago to hold a meeting with the celebrated mogul Scarsdale Vibe, a man so representative of evil that he cannot stop himself, on the short trip from the hotel lobby to his room, shooting an old lady, who has heckled him, in the leg with a bullet from his silver topped cane.

At the meeting, in a dark, curtained, penthouse suite, the socialist Ray Ipsow is not comfortable and soon takes himself away to the bar. Meanwhile Vibe explains the purpose of the meeting:

Nikola Tesla pioneer of electrical engineering is working on a World-System for producing huge amounts of electrical power that anyone can tap into for free, anywhere in the world, because it uses the planet as an element in a gigantic resonant circuit.

Of course, it is the free bit that Vibe objects to. He asks Vanderjuice to invent a counter-transformer to nullify the effects of of Tesla's invention.

Finance is arranged and the Professor is left to stare into the depths of his ancient hat, as if it were the vestiary expression of his present situation.

Against the Day a page a day#7

If the last entry, the encounter with the Bindlestiffs of the Blue, was very reminiscent of Scooby-Doo - I'm sure that somewhere I have seen an image of them dressed in similar attire - then the next progression, as Randolph St. Cosmo visits the offices of White City Investigations, is Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

With some very snappy dialogue a secretary twice reminds us of how young Randolph is (Scooby again) before introducing tec Nate Privett. Nate makes reference to the Haymarket bomb, an event that will have taken place some six years earlier but whose significance - an Anarchist threat- still hangs over the city. Nate explains they need an overview and commissions Randolph to take a man out to the fair, maybe down to the Yards, duck soup.

Against the Day a page a day #6

...a human being with his skin removed...Max Weber on the city of Chicago at the time of the Exposition, quoted in The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

Dinner and song over Miles and Lindsay are allowed "ground-leave" in Chicago, but only after they have been deemed by Randolph, to pass muster. Randolph, himself dressed in mufti, addresses them on the perils and vice simmering at the edges of the Exposition. A word to the wise...or in this case...hrrumph...hmmmm,howsoever...good liberty boys, I say, and good luck.

Darby and Chick meanwhile are assigned watch-duty. They share coffee sitting by the fire, silent as a pair of drovers camping out on the western prairie before Chick confesses to missing his father. Pugnax the dog spies visitors and is soon the recipient of a cartoon steak as the Bindlestiffs of the Blue show themselves. The Bindlestiffs are fellow sky travellers whose Captain is Miss Penelope (Penny) Black. Darby carries a torch for her. They kiss in a friendly way.

Talk turns to the Garcons de '71, a French band of aeronauts formed some 20 years earlier during the Sieges of Paris, when manned balloons were often the only way to communicate in or out of the city, bringing forth this observation:

As the ordeal went on, it became clear to certain of these balloonists...how much the modern State depended for its survival on maintaining a condition of permanent siege...

Against the Day a page a day#5

And suddenly I have the distinct, queasy feeling that I am in this way over my head. There are people here linking to people here who are reading ATD as a multi-dimensional inter-narrative of coinciding realities in differentiated time and space whilst, at best, I am talking about what might happen if you were to accidentally drop your copy into the crapper.(Except, except, via another of those links, I have just come across this Duchampian urinal, so maybe I'm not so wide of the mark afterall.)

Anyhow, it's all good stuff, but I shall resist getting to closely involved with it because I'm gonna read this sucker my way or not at all. (There's bound to be some surreptitious peeking though.)

I too had been moved to dig out my copy of The Devil in White City by Erik Larson, the popular history of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 at the edge of which our Chums are now safely rested alongside many another exotic airship, aviator and sky-dog; greetings hailed through megaphone, and the evening was thus atwitter, like the trees of many a street in the city nearby, with aviatory pleasantries...(ah.)

Then I was reminded also of The World for a Shilling by Michael Leapman a popular history of The Great Exhibition in London in 1851: The Crystal Palace, relocated to this neck of the woods in 1854. Do I know where I'm going with this? Not a clue.

The lads break out some food and Miles proves himself adept in the galley frying up a 'mess' of catfish before producing a ukulele, allowing the Chums a chance at song.

The Chum of Chance is a pluck-y soul,

Who shall neither whine nor ejac-u-late

For his blood's as red and his mind's as pure

As the stripes on his bla-a-zer immac-u-late!

Both books here

Against the Day a page a day - appendix #1

Hurrah! We have a fellow traveller.

Against the Day a page a day#4

Near the town of Thick Bush.

Blige, I almost dropped it down the toilet this morning. You want Cloakroom Classics? I'll give you hardcore Cloakroom Classics. Imagine calling out the plumber.

Have you any Idea what might be blocking your pan?

Yes, 1084 pages of prime Thomas Pynchon in the UK Jonathan Cape edition with the white cover that marks easily.

Anyhows, first we have a little backstory involving the probationer of the crew, Chick Counterfly who we are told has been rescued from the clutches of the Ku Klux Klan whilst the ship was resting beside a black-water river in the Deep South,(near the town of Thick Bush) his crime, in the eyes of the Klan, to be the son of 'Dick' Counterfly a man who has recently attempted to sell the state of Mississippi to a mysterious Chinese consortium based in New Mexico.

Are you keeping up? Good.

Next we are coming down low over the stockyards of Chicago, our Chums astonished at their aerial view of The Great Bovine City of the World and a graphic illustration of the proto-industrial slaughtering process(moo).

Suddenly we are descending far too quickly, the consequence of the clumsy (spastical oaf) china breaker, Miles Blundell becoming entangled with a pulley attached to a valve. But wait. Hurrah for Darby the plucky fellow has climbed the lines and manually closed the valve and our passage has now slowed to the pace of a falling autumn leaf; leaving just enough time for Miles to spy through a telescope, a woman, naked, but for the flowers in her hair and a gentleman photographer with tripod and camera fleeing to a nearby patch of woods, before we land.

Got a cold. Bugger crept up on me yesterday. Got much worse today.

Against The Day a page a day#3

Suddenly, poor young Darby is upbraided for slack speech by the stern voice of second in command Lindsay Noseworth. He holds Darby by the ankles and swings the terrified boy outside the basket miles above the earth before being tempered by the clearly more kindly Randolph.

Away to the side two more of the crew are accidentally breaking crockery, and a dog, (imagine my delight at this) a mutt named Pugnax, is reading Henry James.

Carrying this book around for a few days is a lot like holding a new-born child, which leads me to think it would have been a great boon to us all if it had been marketed with its own papoose.

Against the Day a page a day#2

It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.

-Thelonius Monk

One: The Light Over the Ranges

And already I feel comfortable keeping company with the Chums of Chance as they set sail in their hydrogen skyship Inconvenience for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, dressed as they are in their summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazers and matching trousers of sky blue. Captained by Randolph St. Cosmo they seem a happy ship full of promise, innocence and adventure, none more so than Darby Suckling, the baby of the crew his tow-coloured locks streaming in the wind.

Which reminds me of the only time I ever ventured into the basket of a hot air balloon. Probably 20 years ago at a very famous balloon meet in Calvados, on a beautifully still Sunday evening, we were taken up into the air by two pissed Tory teddy bear manufacturers, who, for a sort of bet, quickly soared us up to 8,000 ft. By this time I was sitting on the bottom of the basket swearing like a baby whilst Justine lent over the side, saying things like; Oh look, you can see the curve of the earth from here!

Against the Day a page a day

 

For no better reason than that it is there to be done and my customers keep asking me if I have read it yet, I have decided to read Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon - but I am going to do it at the rate of one page per day. It's 1085 pages long, so by my reckoning (which admittedly is probably not pentium strength) I should be turning the final page sometime around Nov 24th 2009.

I shall be reading a box-damaged copy of the UK Jonathan Cape edition, though were I buying a copy to keep on my own bookshelf I would go for the US Penguin edition - not a great deal of difference between the two except that Penguin have sprung for a laminated cover which is mush less likely to get marked.

My copy was lying on the kitchen table last night when first born came into the room.

Woah, Dad, biiiiig book. She said. Dad, you're not actually going to read this are you?

I'm thinking about it, I said.

Are you going to review it?

I might do, just for fun, I said.

For fun! You're going to read all of that for a joke, are you mad?!

Possibly.

The trouble with big books like that, is that they just drone on and on and on and on, she added, the eldest child of a bookseller.

She did then proceeded to give me a top myspace tutorial though.