Anachronisms in M&D--spoilers?

[Maximus Clarke]

On Wed, 28 May 1997, Basileios Drolias wrote:
> > Toby comments:
> > Still it was eight years before Cherrycoke
> > tells the tale and he may have thrown in the Mesmer stuff to juice up
> > the story for the kids."
> > 
> > Also there is reference to Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" of the market, but
> > THE WEALTH OF NATIONS from which the phrase came was not published until
> > the noteworthy date of 1776.
> 
> Or how about the mention of Laplace in M&D's first meeting, when laplace 
> was two years old at the time...

I begin to suspect that one reason TRP chose the framing device he did
was to allow Cherrycoke to throw in references to interesting 18th-c.
persons and ideas who post-dated the actual drawing of the Line.

And of course Pynchon is writing the story that Cherrycoke is telling about
M & D, so we get some fun 20th-c. references too.  How meta.

Max

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