notes

Dream-blown as the notorious pigeon population, contemplating the sky, they became aware that morning of something else was about to emerge from the sfumato, some visitation . . . something that was to transcend both Chums and Tovarishchi, for all at once there was a great stunning hoarse cry from the invisibility, nearly a material thing, a lethal impedance in the air, as if something malevolent were making every exertion to take form and be released upon the world in long, dry, cracking percussions, as if jarring the fabric of four-space itself.

From Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day. British Vintage edition. Page 288.