Stencil's submarine scungille farm

[Terrance]

A submarine scungille farm? Strange! Mr. Pynchon may not be
a black humorist, that term may be of no use here, but he is
certainly trying very hard, here as a young man up to his
hips in books, to stumble about in Joyce's giant overshoes.
HHH, VVV, MMM, what fun Mr. Pynchon is having with Mr.
Graves.  

scungille shell:  Stencil's scungille farm, 62; 178; what
Botticelli's Venus seems to be standing in; "There's nothing
inside. Only the scungille shell." 370; 384; [Education of
Henry Adams]

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/adams.html#virgin

Graves tells us that scungille,  periwinkle, scallop, were
aphrodisiacs, sacred to Aphrodite, identified by the shell,
the mirror ("know thyself") and vanity, the comb (originally
a plectrum for plucking lyre strings) and heartlessness,
associated with the Moon Goddess Eurynome, Botticelli's
Birth Of Venus is an exact icon of her cult, in English
ballad poetry she is the bitter sweetness of love and danger
for travelers, mariners in foreign ports, like the ports of
Malta.  See The White Goddess Chapter 22, Ophielia's song in
Shakespeare's Hamlet, the introduction of the idea of
Romantic Love in Western Europe, Love In The Western World,
Denis De Rougemont.

Merry, May,  Marah (Hebrew for brine), myrrh the gift of one
of those wise guys, MARY, Merry old England and Merry Robin
(can't get more phallic than Robin) Hood, "Who'll hunt the
Wren?" cries Robin the Bobbin, who is the Devil, the dark
deep in the middle of Stencil's shells, the black mass and
kiss his ass, down where only GOD knew what lived.
What is living down in that Rock? White Ivory? 

This is the "nacreous mass of inference, poetic license
[...] imaginative anxiety or historical care, which is
recognized by no one."