M&D (1)

[still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made]

On Wed, 7 May 1997, thomasvieth wrote:

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> First, I thought it does follow the German rules, but then it doesn't, 
> because there are mid-sentence adjectives that are capitalized and they 
> are certainly not in German. I think both spelling and capitalization are 
> nilly-willy as they were back then. I mean, this wasn't yet the age of 
> Common Spelling Rules.

I think you're probably right.  The German rule is basically just to
capitalize all proper nouns and names.  Pynchon follows this most of the
time, but maybe not 100%.  And actual 18th-c. English writing seems rather
arbitrary.  There are a few excerpts in _M&D_ that appear to be actual
quotes from Mason's & Dixon's notes, and the capitalization in these bits
is rather random-looking.

Max

 M a x i m u s  D a v i d  C l a r k e | while I crawl into the unknown/
          http://www.afn.org/~traveler | cover me/
                 "Surrealist-At-Large" | I'm going hunting for mysteries/
                      traveler at afn.org | cover me...  --bjork