MDMD (6)---192.4----192.12 Pynchon, 11 days, E.U.

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

"Because their Philosophers and ours", explains one Mr Hailstone,
are all in League, with those in other States in Europe, and the
Jesuits too, among them possessing Machines, Powders, Rays,
Elixirs and such, none less than remarkable(
)"

"Time ye see", says the Landlord, "is the money of Science, isn’t it.
The Philosophers need a time, common to all, as Traders do a
common Coinage." 

"Suggesting an Interest, in those Events which would occur
in several Parts of the Globe at the same Instant."

                          *******

It seems to me that on p192 the resistance towards losing 
the 11 days is not only a matter of the difficulty the poor
had in paying rents on properties  for days they never 
had the privilege to live through while neither having had
the work days to pay them off. It is akin to something
more modern.

Ithe popular resistance toward a Europe united and homogenised 
in the interests of  capital and power---notice how Time and Money 
are equated. At least some of Pynchon's time in GB writing and 
doing research was very likely co-incidental with the hot debates 
around European Monetary Union, a cause for which there is very
little popular sympathy amongst most actual European Citizens,
but a very great deal amongst most European big businesses,
City Dealers and bureaucrats. I wonder if we aren't meant to be 
drawing at least a few parallels here?

              -----------------------------------
     For what its worth (maybe nothing,) there is a pub called
the George down near what we who have lived behind
the Strand fondly call "piss alley." It is midway down John Adam
Street between the end where Peyps lived, and the end of the Royal
Society of Arts library. It is also where Napoleon (!) lived
as a young man while he was trying to get a commission 
in the British forces. Not many people know that.
 
Eric Alan Weinstein
University of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk