MDMD(5): Some Things Incomprehens'ble

[jbor]

> Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net> wrote:
> 
>> 1. (58.15) 'sepia-shadow'd Her[r]en XVII'.  Does the colour sepia refer
>> to their faces? Is it a colour used in their robes and other clothing
>> (but I know they were usually dressed in black).  Is the use of sepia
>> linked to richness, just as the use of the colour blue some centuries
>> before was?

A lot of old photographs are done in sepia, and it's one of the pigments
used in monochromatic sketching and to print engravings. I get the
impression that his memory is fading into the past as if into sepia shadows.
Maybe a lithograph? But why must the existence of the "Eighteenth Lord ...
never be acknowledg'd in any way" at the Cape?

>> 4. (60.34) 'narrative rubbish-tip of this Arm-chair commando': I simply
>> don't understand that.

This idea of narrative as a disjointed patchwork of trivia, faulty memories
and effluvia is a common enough theme throughout Pynchon's work. Cornelius
is an "Arm-chair Commando" because he monopolises the parlour conversation I
guess. It's interesting that the stereotypes he propagates ("the mad Rhino
forever rolls his eye, ... the cowardly Kaffirs turn and flee") mark him as
a liar and a bigot, whereas the stereotypes earlier on didn't have the same
valence at all. I can see how this is achieved (the earlier examples were
imbedded in dialogue and event whereas Vroom's exaggerations and propensity
to self-aggrandisement are being reported by an external narrator and serve
as an component of characterisation) but I'm not sure what to make of it.

best