MDDM Ch. 10 The Bull's Eye

[Paul Mackin]

I found the piece. It's solid glass with a slightly greenish tint weighing I
guess about 3 pounds and is in the shape of a hexagonal pyrimid. The
diameter is 4 inches and the depth is 4 inches. To describe the shape more
precisely the base extends straight about an inch before the pyrimid starts
and there is an eight of an inch lip serving to hold the thing in place in
the hexagonal hole cut out of the ship's deck. The base is on top, toward
the sunlight, and the apex points down into the interior of the boat. Though
the piece I have is probably meant as an ornament  I'm sure it would be
fully functional if mounted in an appropriate place.


        P.

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 9:28 PM
Subject: Re: MDDM Ch. 10 The Bull's Eye


> paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:
>
> > The guy's fascinated by light spectrums, red shifting, doppler effects,
> > wants to ascribe meanings. Does he mean we are all moving away from each
> > other. Not at near the speed of light or anything but nevertheless
> > diverging.
> >
> > Did someone say those things mounted in ship bulkheads (of yore) to
provide
> > light to the interior are called bull's eyes? Heavy glass objects
tapering
> > in flat edges to a point, conically prismatic?  Got one here somewhere
but
> > never knew what they were called.
>
> I got the definition from _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_. I'd
be
> interested to hear what it's like: convex or concave? one way or two way
or
> no way vision? I got the impression it's a thick glass lens of some type
> which lets light in but which you can't see clearly through. It's set in
the
> deck apparently, not like a porthole window.
>
> I agree with Terrance that it's an atmospheric effect which is described,
"a
> strange dark cloud with a red center" (87), but I haven't been able to
find
> any data to say that this cloud over Table Mountain is known as a "Bull's
> Eye". When it is first mentioned it is Mason who refers to it by this
name,
> and the name is put in inverted commas, then Austra takes it up at 91. I
> guess a bull's eye is red, both on a bull and on a dart board target,
which
> might be enough to explain it. But the way that Austra uses it on p. 91,
and
> the way that it is used again on p. 99, it refers to an act of looking at
> the Cape society through a different perspective, as if through a wider or
> more objective lens, which is why the sense of "Bull's Eye" as the glass
> disc on a ship's deck, using a maritime metaphor for the different
societies
> above and below deck, and how these view one another, to relate to the
> society at the Cape, holds some appeal.
>
> Again, I think there's a juxtaposition. Mason and Dixon and the Vroom
girls
> are looking out at the galaxy through their telescope lenses and
"Spy-Glass"
> (99.4), but there is a sense of "Africa", as an allegorical figure, or
else
> some celestial, "objective" observer, looking *in* at the goings-on at the
> Cape. And it is Austra and the "Droster Republick" (91.29) who are aligned
> to this vantage by the text.
>
> I agree that Austra is teasing the Vroom sisters, but it is gentle, and
> there is a real sense of sodality between them, which is why Austra holds
> her tongue at the bottom of p. 90 I think. The girls regard her like a
> sister, and she, comfortably and naturally, feels and acts like one: "Jet
> and Els ... lie together upon one Astronomer's Couch,-- as, promptly, do
> Austra and Greet, upon the other. (92.6)
>
> best
>
>
>