MDMD(6): A difficult passage

[John Bailey]

The way I see this passage, and it is a difficult one, is...

Mason has mentioned that he's no longer enjoying himself with the Vrooms, 
the food alone being terrible, and that he's beginning to prefer the icy 
solitude of the beachside where they are standing to the horrors of the 
Vroom family: "I'd rather be out here". Dixon agrees "Why aye", and then we 
have described what 'out here' really means.

That is, 'out here' is a very cold and lonely place, isolated from other 
people, but also pure, mathematical and mysterious. So, our boys (or at 
least Mason, Dixon might be agreeing to be nice) would rather be alone right 
now.


>From: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>
>To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: MDMD(6): A difficult passage
>Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 09:18:02 +0200
>
>" "Why aye, " --as far projected into the Sea, each will confide, as
>Land may go, out blessedly alone upon the furthest Point, nothing beyond
>but the uninterrupted planeatry Seas of the 40's, the West Wind Express,
>and the Regions of Ice, and the Mystery of the exact Other Pole,-- the
>night Fog creeping like quicksilver, all but surrounded by a Waste where
>the Seas might grow higher than either Astronomer can imagine without
>Fear, set up and waiting for a Southern Star, Lumina of a shapely
>Constellation unnam'd, forever below any British Horizon, to culminate."
>
>This whole paragraph, (83.18 -->83.25), though I understand literally
>what it says, doesn't make much sense to me, nor can I see it as a
>comment on the previous conversation.  Help me.
>
>Michel.
>


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