mdmd(4) - Commentary

[KENNETH HOUGHTON]

     Like any good rock and roller, you have, of course, read the numbers 
     backwards.  They are 4 (iv), 9 (ix), and 50 and 5 (l) e[t] (v).
     
     The first two could be construed to be seven-squared (49, as in the 
     Crying of Lot...), while the later is clearly a reference to either 
     the (late, somewhat unlamented) National Speed Limit (55) or the 
     Half-dollar (Liberty) and the nickel (Buffalo/Indian; connotable to 
     being the cost of liberty)


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: RE: mdmd(4) - Commentary
Author:  "Steven Maas (CUTR)" <maas at cutr.eng.usf.edu> at dbnaccip
Date:    7/18/97 11:23 AM


Sherwood, Harrison wrote:
> >Not only is this chapter eleven, but "a pair of Gallows,
> >simplified to Penstokes in the glare of this Ocean sky" (108-21) is an 
> >example of an eleven drawn on the landscape. This helps establish the 
> >connection between the number and death, or at least transition.
> >Later, in chapter 56, Mason tells of living through the eleven missing 
> >days, as a sort of ghastly underworld.
> 
> A-and 5+6=11!
     
The words "five, six, eleven" contain the numbers "v, vi, xi."  The 
remaining letters spell "seen flee."  Just who or what was "seen [to] 
flee" from that ghastly underworld?