MDDM Ch. 12 Gothickal Scribblers Part One

[John Bailey]

Mr. Mornival calls to mind Mourning and Carnival, an interesting mix…but 
that’s not what I’m here about. I’m here about Gothickal scribblings.

Pynchon knows his Gothickal scribblings. Grub Street is mentioned in the 
previous chapter, whilst Mason wanders London in a daze, and after I read in 
the archives the following…

110.19 `Grub Street' M17, a street in London, later Milton Street,
Moorgate, where many need y and struggling authors lived, come to
symbolize needy authors and literary hacks

I re-read the passage in which it is placed, and had to completely 
re-interpret it. It reads as follows: “[Mason travels] –to the Fabulators of 
Grub-Street, a licentious night-world of Rakes and Whores, surviving only in 
memories of pleasure, small darting winged beings, untrustworthy as 
remembrancers…yet its infected, fragrant, soiled encounters ‘neath the moon 
were as worthy as any,- and evil-in-innocence….”

Well, setting aside the Blakean feelings I get here (evil-in-innocence?, 
also cf Blake’s poem ‘London Town’, reworked as a song by The Verve, though 
uncredited, in fact, bit of trivia there) the Grub-Street mention seems a 
bit weird. Why would Mason go looking for mindless pleasures to help him 
forget in…a street where struggling authors lived? No, stop thinking that, 
people, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m thinking that this is a 
description of Mason’s descent into the world of crap fiction, as an escape 
from his mourning. After all, reading a lurid horror could be described as 
an ‘evil-in-innocence’. Mason reads about Rakes and Whores, but this passage 
seems to imply that reading this sort of trash is OK, and that the 
experience, at least, is ‘as worthy as any’. Says a bit about the Pynchonian 
mixture of high and low art, yeah? It’s complicated…



>From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
>To: John Bailey <johnbonbailey at hotmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: MDDM Ch. 12 Summary & Notes
>Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 04:16:07 -0800 (PST)
>
>Okay, to get back to the perfectly unobjectionable
>post which seemingly started it all ...
>
>--- John Bailey <johnbonbailey at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I've read of the Ghastly Fop as a real serial
> > somewhere other than M&D, but I can't remember where
>
> > (it was a long time ago). I'm definitely not
> > misremembering, and I'm pretty confident that
> > Pynchon was using (or abusing) a 'real' source here,
> > although I have a slight suspicion that it was the
> > Ghostly Fop, though I could be wrong here, as ever
> > and elsewhere.
>
>To be honest, I'd assumed so far that The Ghastly Fop
>was, like The Revenger's Tragedy, another pastiche on
>Pynchon's part.  Can't find an actual published TGF,
>or The Vampyrs of Covent Garden (M&D, Ch. 12, p. 113),
>for that matter, but, hey, if anybody's got info ...
>
>But, given a chance to catch up here, I suppose I
>really should be able to come up with some salient
>info, at least, on that "Gothick" genre in general and
>some likley sources in particular here, so ...
>
>Vampyrs of Covent Garden, though ... Covent Garden was
>and remains a center of cultural and, esp., commercial
>life in London, right?  See, e.g. ...
>
>http://www.cgareatrust.org.uk/intro/history.htm
>
>Suspect a little joke there with "Vampyrs" ...
>
>
>
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