MDMD(1)--Card Table

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Real quik cuz I'm late and there's a million messages to get 
through--but one might note the pattern of these images of
 surface/depth/text all conjoined--and think about them tying
 TRP into old Melville's favorite image clusters--the inscribed
 surface (Ahab has a tablet set into his wooden leg; writes on it--
  interesting image of the bady as text), the engraving
 (Queequeeg's tatoos/coffin), the verigrised icons that
 seem to hold runic meaning--in my
 opinion this self-reflexive trope is the key to the Melville-Pynchon axis.  The 
heiroglyphic and vatic image of the magic, inscribed or superimposed character--
it comes up over and over again in both TRP and Melville.

Hey Manta--did you get into this into that paper you wrote on CONFIDENCE MAN? Like 
the chalkboard the C. Man writes on throughout?

john m
*****************************************
>
>> From: John Pendergast <jpender at saturn.vcu.edu>
>> 
>> Much has been said about the masterful opening of the book and its
>> deliberate echo of GR. Also, many of us seem to isolate specific passage
>> and to use them as metaphoric "roadmaps" to Pynchon's narrative.As far
>> as I know, however, no one has mentioned the following passage which
>> could serve as a possible metaphor for the entire book:
>> 
>> "mostly Pine and Cherry about, nor much Mahogany, excepting a sinister
>> and wonderful Card Table which exhibits the cheaper Wave-like Grain
>> known in the Trade as Wand'ring Heart, causing an illusion of Depth into
>> which for years children have gaz'd as into the illustrated Pages of
>> Books. . ."
>> 
>[snip]
>
>> Anyone else see echos of this passage in the book?
>> 
>Most assuredly:  there are several interiors that are larger than their
>exteriors.
>
>davemarc
>