MDDM Ch. 11 Stars and Planets

[jbor]

Does the fact that St. Helena (15 55 S. 5 44 W.) is quite close to the
Equator make a difference here? If it's the "Island's Zenith Star" (107.11)
doesn't that mean that it is the one (and only?) star which does cross
directly overhead every night at this latitude? Isn't the problem with the
longitude caused by ships at sea not staying at the same latitude?

And, just above this, is the "Black Sheep of the family of Planets, neither
to be sacrificed to Hades nor spoken of by Name.... " (107.9) still a
reference to Uranus?

Someone mentioned that it was a reference to Pluto, which, though I don't
think it *is* being referenced in this novel, does play a major part in _GR_
because of the time of its discovery. Otto noted that Sirius is a binary
system. I read on the weekend that many scientists now consider Pluto, with
its enormous moon Charon, to be a dual-planet system rather than a single
planet. Although, the article also noted that last year the American Museum
of Natural History dropped Pluto from the pantheon of the planets because it
is too small, reclassifying it as one of the 300 icy bodies orbiting beyond
Neptune in the Kuiper Belt.

best


on 6/11/01 3:16 AM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:


> Looking back to the first MDMD, I noticed that Andrew Dinn thought that
> P made a blatant error when he describes Sirius in this Chapter.
> 
> Dinn's Note:  
> 
> 107.15  "Ev'ry Midnight the baleful thing is there, crossing directly
> overhead..."  I think this is an outright error on TRP's part:  No
> single star resides overhead each midnight of the year, otherwise the
> longitude problem would have been a great deal easier.  Could just be
> sloppy writing.
> 
> Or it could be that St. Helena (its stars, its  sky, its seas, volcanic
> landscape, etc.)  as Wicks "Baedeckers" it (having never been there) and
> Pynchon fictionalizes it, is more like Swift's floating Island in GT.
> Yup, that's what it is. The island, like many of the "Baedeckered"
> landscapes and cities in P's fiction, is a stage or mechanical theatre.