Pages 468-472

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 468

White Rabbit Statue, Llandudno

The Welsh resort town is supposed to be where Carroll first told young Alice Liddell the stories that would become Alice in Wonderland (although most scholars doubt that Carroll ever was in the town). A statue of the White Rabbit was dedicated by David Lloyd George in 1933.

Page 470

470.18 "[ . . . ] out the eye at tower's summit [ . . . ]"
See correspondent Stephen Remato's commentary. WARNING: contains spoilers!

Page 471

471.24 Moxie
Slothrop does not imagine but recalls billboards he had seen in the Berkshires, of a favorite American soft drink.

471.30 drowned Becket
Not the Martyr of Canterbury but a town in Massachusetts nearly destroyed by a flood in 1927. This is another reference from The Berkshire Hills.