M&D ca. p 100--source?

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

On Tue, 13 May 1997 MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu wrote:

> Can't remember the exact page, but the little conversation between the
> clocks onboard ship--is it just before Dixon leaves St. Helena?  Reading
> Dava Sobel's LONGITUDE this morning I find:  Cornered, Harrison led
> Maskelyne into the room where he kept the clocks, which had been his close
> companions for thirty years.  They were all running, each in its own
> characteristic way, like a gathering of old friends in animated
> conversation (p. 136) 
> 
> Though, as the passage above reveals, Sobel has a tin ear and a poor grasp
> of sentence structure, yet perhaps this little trope was inspiring of the
> fleshed out idea in M & D?  At any rate, seems a good sign that Sobel's
> LONGITUDE (copyright 1995) was a source.  Date of pub. might give some
> good textual scholar someday a hook on TRP's method of composition? 

Check out _The Island of the Day Before_, by Umberto Eco.  Not sure when it
came out...maybe 1995?  Early 1996?  It has a scene very much like this.  It
too is much concerned with the longitude question.  I wouldn't be surprised
if TRP read Eco while writing _M&D_.  I wouldn't be surprised if Eco read
Sobel...

Max

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