MDMD (6)----p195,196 Asiatick Pygmies

[Mark Smith]

Eric Alan Weinstein wrote:
> 
> Strange how they inhabit 11 days that do not exist.
> Nice if strange idea. Overall however,
> I found this moment in the text most perplexing.
> Did anyone have any reaction to this?


Yes, actually.  Apart from the previously mentioned Jack Van Impe
resonances, there's this hauntingly familiar exchange between the ship's
carpenter and Ahab.  The carpenter is in the process of fashioning a new
leg for Ahab, when the subject of a phantom limb comes up.  I quote at
length, chap. 108, "Moby Dick":

Carpenter:  Truly sir, I begin to understand somewhat now.  Yes, I have
heard something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man
never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still
pricking him at times.  May I humbly ask if it be really so,sir?

Ahab:  It is, man.  Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine
was; so, now here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the
soul. Where thou feelst tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a
hair, do I.  Is't a riddle?

Carpenter:  I should humbly call it a poser, sir.

Ahab:  Hist, then.  How dost thou know that some entire, living,
thinking thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing
precisely where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite?

----
I think its uncanny.
But I also think that Pynch is directly referring to redneck
fundamentalists, in their use of the book of Revelations to support
their whacko apocalyptic predictions.  See quote, p. 192: "Like in the
Book of Revelations?"  Then another downtrodden yokel attempts to draw
Mason in through science by saying, "Like the Transit of Venus, eh Mr.
Mason?"  All this while Mason, man of science, "pretends to examine his
shoe-buckle, trying not to sigh too heavily.  Of the many Classics of
Idiocy, this Idiocy of the Eleven Days has joined the select handful
that may never be escaped" (p190).  He would like to be left out of this
absurd discussion, but responds thus: "Yahh!" Mason jumping in
surprise.  Thankee, Sir, I never heard that one before."

The whole discussion at the provincial pub centers around xenophobia,
religion and pseudo-science.  They are trying to cast a large loop with
a short rope.  Then (I think) by page 194, when Mason is eventually
drawn into the conspiracy conversation with the pub requlars, he starts
to savor the moment, spinning a tall tale, just for the hell of it.
Notice, the "Asiatick Pygmies" come from Stepney.  He's winding them up.

> Or perhaps I will understand after another pint 
> at the George?

Nahhh...That would need to be the "Snipe and Shaft". 
--
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"Go bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,/Which, like unruly children,
make their sire/Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight."