MDMD Jesuit Instrument

[The Great Quail]

Terrance writes,

>Jesuit: In the Roman Catholic Church are  member of the Society of
>Jesus, an order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in 1534.
>
>Jesuit also means,  One given to subtle casuistry.

And of course, soon the Jesuits will come to play a deeper and more 
occult role, with their telegraph and code systems and so on.....

Another book that places a lot of strange powers and technological 
devices to the hands of the Jesuits is Umberto Eco's The Island of 
the Day Before, which features some unusual Jesuit characters that 
have all manner of inventions and devices. When I was reading M&D, I 
was struck by many similarities in spirit between the more fanciful 
aspects of both works. Both Pynchon and Eco seem to be ascribing 
almost mystical (and certainly anachronistic) powers of invention to 
Jesuits; while that certainly has some humorous historical 
connotations, I wonder if it is also a sly ribbing aimed at that 
grand old jejune Jesuit himself, James Joyce, aka Dedalus the 
Artificer.

Of course, I see Joycean allusions everywhere, from Hamlet to Chicken 
Soup for the Golfer's Soul.

--Bid Bird
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth:
http://www.TheModernWord.com

"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each
event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown
but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from
behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!
How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?"
      --Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20011016/e93dc224/attachment.html>