Such motivated punning on names points to the potential for hidden meaning that lurks within almost every name and noise uttered in Katchor's work. Katchor's determination to pun on the real names of historical persons only adds to our sense that meaning depends on a cast of mind, a readiness to seek out the full value of words and names. Thus another historical figure, Joseph Priestly, the discoverer of oxygen, has his surname endowed with its full etymological force. Priestly becomes priestly indeed in the eyes of the sectarians of New Afflatus, a utopian community of "free oxygenators, air bathers, [and] wind worshipers" who have made Priestly's scientific writings the scriptural basis of their new cult of oxygen (27.4ff).

While Priestly's real name gives rise to a fictitious religious community, the names of two fictional characters derive from bona fide scriptures. Mr. Marah, an importer of religious articles, becomes the business partner of Nathan Kishon, a disgraced ritual slaughterer with a valuable quantity of beaver pelts. They make an unlikely pair, but their names link them to two biblical passages that are associated with each other in the Jewish liturgy. Traditional Jewish liturgy divides the pentateuch into weekly portions that are paired with a reading from the so-called "prophetic" books of the Hebrew Bible, which include such historical narratives as Joshua, Judges, and Kings in addition to Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the like. In the weekly portion from Exodus that describes the crossing of the Red Sea, the Israelites stop for awhile at the bitter waters of Marah (which means "bitter" in Hebrew) become camping at Elim; in the coupled reading from the Book of Judges, Israelite forces clash with Canaanite armies at the brook of Kishon (Hebrew nachal Kishon). Given Katchor's evident familiarity with Jewish sources both familiar and esoteric, it is altogether likely that the names of Mr. Marah and Nathan Kishon, business partners, deliberately echo the biblical placenames, Marah and Kishon, that stand out as the names of bodies of water in traditionally linked biblical texts.  continue...