Chapter 1: 5-11
Page 3
Latitudes and Departures
Portmanteau of 'latitudes and longitudes' with 'arrivals and departures'.
Page 5
[capitalization]
No discernible pattern? Caps seem accented to be stressed as in reading poetry?
Uncapitalised nouns in the first paragraph include: shoes, slaps, afternoon, raer, years, table, side-benches, branch, family.
Capitalised abstract nouns include: Arcs, Sides, Descent, Dither, Fly.
mis-matche'd side-benches....Lancaster County"
Lancaster County is one place where wood craftsmen like the Shakers and the Amish settled. Suggests handmade individual pieces?
Wand'ring Heart...end of itp. 6
Thematic? One can not 'get to the end'of the Wand'ring Heart grain? Lovely internal metaphor if it is.
Wand'ring Heart grain [of wood]
evidently a real name for a wood veneer finish. Also called Wild Heart.
...is North America's largest manufacturer of hardwood plywood, veneer, and flooring. ... Wild Heart, etc. here is a link about wandring heart.
Page 6
Christmastide of 1786 sometime between 12/25 and 1/6. However since the year is mentioned, it is probably betwen Christmas and New Years Eve.
"Mischianza"
EB11-Philadelphia history
Nerve-Lines
If this is meant to imply branching dendrites, it's anachronistic.
Distance to a Star
Not until 1838.
Not true, Lalande got a pretty good figure off of the Transit of Venus data from 1761 and 1769, with a figure of 153 million kilometres(±1 million km) Which is only 2.27% off of the correct value of 149,597,870,691 ± 30 metres
Transit of Venus Astronomical Unit
Page 7
Boppo
Not in OED.
Tenebrae
Darkness (Latin).
size and difficulty
Cf "Lot 49"?
Jabot
pix
Page 8
Secret Relation
His journal? (relation = narrative or account def)
Page 9
The crime of "Anonymity"...Gaol...Exile
With this discription of the Revs Crime of exposing power with the intention of being anonymous and seeking exile as a way of avoiding prison, there is an implication that Cherrycoke's voice is Pynchon himself.
Page 10
my name had never been my own
???
