mdmd(4) - Commentary

[Paul Murphy]

Brian D. McCary comments on Maskelyne's soliloquy upon turning 29:

>An interesting
>sentiment penned by an Author recently turned sixty.  Pynchon would
>have turned 29 in 1966, after V. was published and he was already being
>heralded.  Seems like Richard Farina might have died about that time,
>perhaps around that age, but I don't have the dates or details on me.

I'm not sure how much autobiographical speculation helps here. Perhaps
someone knows statistics concerning average life-expectancy in the 1700's,
but I speculate that the proverbial three-score-and-ten was pushing the
upper limits. So the looming threshold of 30 would induce angst in many --
the eighteenth-century version of the mid-life crisis -- and Maskelyne is
already rather predisposed towards musing on mortality.

Not that things have changed entirely -- I've known many acquaintances who
fretted turning 30 as much as Mask., but they were a bit less florid about
it ... BTW, contemporary literature has a fine example of the portrait of
the single man edging towards 30 and going crazy in James Kelman's _A
Disaffection_.

Cheers,
Paul
(who turns 29 in Nov.)