MDMD(2): Notes and Questions

[Monte Davis]

Notes on Andrew's notes:
     
>      45.27  `. . . Whenever their circumstances, now uncertain and 
>      eventual, shall happen to be reduced to Certainty' Is this from a
real 
>      `Letter of Reproach and Threat'? (45.5) What an image and how well 
>      Pynchon uses it in the next few lines. Compare this removal of
choice 
>      with the fate of the preterite in GR or the Thanatoids in Vineland.

And another echo he leaves it to us to catch: the way Obs are "reduced" to
results, brushed and combed and ranked in an ephemeris. There's a quiet war
going on among observational and computational techniques (e.g. Longitude
by Lunar Culminations, 74.19, vs. Harrison's chronometry). cf. GR 726: the
"quaint, brownwood-paneled Victorian kind of Brain War... between
quaternions and vector analysis of the 1880s..."

>      47.23... Is there also maybe a suggestion that LeSpark has his angle
on things, 
>      not a right angle, mind, but a crooked one?

Or that he's steered to the cabinet (is there a tantalus?) by a feedback
mechanism that strives to maintain a constant angle on the target? I
believe that too yields a loxodrome on the plane. 

>      49.11  `HMS Unreflective' no rilly?

Irrelevantly, this reminded me of the giddiness of the names Iain M. Banks
gives to spaceships in his 'Culture' SF books: GSV _Youthful Indiscretion_,
GCU
 _ I Thought He Was With You_, GSV _Ethics Gradient_, and so on. (Highly
recommended; http://lucid.cba.uiuc.edu/~rkeogh/banks/ for more.) 
 
>      63.10  `Rattle-Watch' ??

Haven't seen it before, but surely a watchman who (1) rattles doors to
check their locks, and/or (2) sounds a rattle at intervals so the burghers
will know they're getting their guilders' worth?

>      69.28 `Late Blow, late blow, --' = modern day US what?

"late hit" -- a tackle after the play has ended (I'm sure seventeen others
are ahead of me, but this may be the only sports reference I'll ever catch)

>      75.21  `. . . Had they known how disingenuous they appeared . . .'
How 
>      do we know they were not actually disingenuous (both within the
story 
>      and without)? How do we know the Revd is not disingenuous within and

>      Pynchon not disingenuous without. Can we trust either?

Uhhhh... who wants to know?

-Monte <suspiciously>