Pages 3-7

This page-by-page annotation is organized by sections, as delineated by the seven squares (sprockets) which separate each section. The page numbers for this page-by-page annotation are for the original Viking edition (760 pages). Editions by other publishers vary in pagination — the newer Penguin editions are 776 pages; the Bantam edition is 886 pages.

Contributors: Please use a 760-page edition (either the original Viking edition with the orange cover or the Penguin USA edition with the blue cover and rocket diagram — there are plenty on Ebay for around $10) or search the Google edition for the correct page number. Readers: To calculate the Bantam edition use this formula: Bantam page # x 1.165. Before p.50 it's about a page earlier; as you get later in the book, add a page.

Finally, profound thanks to Prof. Don Larsson for providing the foundation for this page-by-page annotation.

Page 3

second sheep
3.14 Compare the narrator’s discussion of William Slothrop’s heretical tract "On Preterition," which argued for the holiness of the preterite, and Weisenburger’s note at 555.29-31.

Page 5

5.03 His name is Capt. Geoffrey ("Pirate") Prentice.
Pirate’s name derives from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance, in which the hero’s nurse has made a fateful error in carrying out her employer’s instructions: Instead of having the boy apprenticed to a (ship’s) pilot, he was apprenticed to a pirate, hence a "pirate ‘prentice." The name, though, is not simply a fortuitous pun: In her error, the nurse has lost a message, like the hare of Herero myth, and thus guaranteed her young charge’s preterition. (There are also connections here to the theme of "communications entropy," which is central to The Crying of Lot 49 and the short story "Entropy.")

5.03 all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil

Didn't notice 'scumbled' first time round, I was going too fast. Second read I looked it up. Scumbled? Isn't that some sort of painting [technique? Pynchon make a mistake there? Mean to say scrambled? Hmmmmmmmm. Then I thought of the 'knives' bit, wondered if artists might use a palette knife to do this scumbling business. A Google search for "scumble knife palette " found me this:

http://www.messums.com/sub_newsview.ink?nid=11191

"Hard impasto ridges left by the edge of the knife provided the texture I needed to bring the waves crashing in."

Impasto eh? I thought that just meant paste. So the knives in "knives of the seasons" makes perfect sense. And Dictionary.com throws up another interesting nugget:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scumbled

"To blur the outlines of: a writer who scumbled the line that divides history and fiction."

Apt example!

Page 6

Suggests the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule that preserves the "living genetic chains" evoked at 10.14.