MDMD2: Magnetical Stupor

[Paul Nightingale]

There's nothing wrong with lowering the tone, I aspire to it every time I
start to write. I'd forgotten the story about Fisher (or is it Fischer, I've
forgotten that as well) and Spassky. Those were the days! I read the other
week that Bobby F (playing safe there) was back playing chess on the
internet. Under an assumed name of course (perhaps he's forgotten how to
spell it as well). But he managed to give himself away by beating everyone,
even though he's "past it" in age terms.

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Lundy" <jlundy at gyk.com.au>
To: "'Paul Nightingale'" <paulngale at supanet.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 5:56 AM
Subject: RE: MDMD2: Magnetical Stupor


>
>
> Paul,
>
> I'm sorry to lower the intellectual tone of this, but does anyone else
> recall that during a match in that great symbolic cold war contest, the
> World Chess Championship, Bobby Fisher and Spassky quarrelled after
Spassky
> refused to continue until Fisher changed his tie?  Spassky said that the
> psychedelic patterns on the tie were clearly designed by the CIA's
> hypnotists and were planned to have a mesmeric effect that would see him
> putty in his opponent's hands.  I thought it was hilarious at the time and
> it all came flooding back.  By the way, I believed Fisher's protestations
> of innocence on the grounds that his appalling dress sense was pretty much
> matched by most Western males in the 70s.
>
> (I'm enjoying your exposition of all of this.  I'm learning lots.  Harry
> Houdini to me was and remains a grim-faced Tony Curtis upside down and
> manacled in a cylinder of arctic water with a how-the-fuck-did-I
> ever-agree-to-try-this look on his face.  So all this is a revelation.
>
> On Monday, 24 September 2001 14:40, Paul Nightingale
> [SMTP:paulngale at supanet.com] wrote:
> > Roy Porter, in Mind-Forg'd Manacles, tells the following story. In the
> 1790s
> > mesmerism would become an unlikely secret weapon for Revolutionary
France
> in
> > the war with Britain. James Tilley Matthews had been briefly imprisoned
> by
> > the French Jacobins; and he it was who exposed the plot upon his return
> to
> > England in 1796. Teams of "magnetic spies" aimed to mesmerise government
> > ministers, he claimed: "Thus, for instance, when the Secretary of War is
> at
> > church, in the theatre, or sitting in his office and thinking on
> indifferent
> > subjects; the expert magnetist would suddenly throw into his mind the
> > subject of exchange of prisoners." Matthews was committed to Bethlem in
> > 1797; this, he argued, was part of a Government/Mesmerist plot to
silence
> > him (Penguin ed, 1990: 237-9).
> >
> > Hence, mesmerism as popular science is associated with threats to the
> > established order, or even just order, as well as paranoia. It is part
of
> > what Foucault called Unreason in the Age of Reason. From Dixon's point
of
> > view Mason has taken leave of his senses, seduced (too strong a word?)
by
> > the Learned Dog (juxtaposed to "an Actress one admires"; something
> > to do with his dead wife). This is all part of Dixon's introduction to
> the
> > city, a dream-world he finds baffling throughout Ch3: his "clear
> > Stupefaction" becomes, is transposed into, Mason's "Magnetical Stupor".
> And
> > then, if the Dog does 'stand in' for Cherrycoke in this chapter, he
> > transforms the observer whose story-telling is merely reactive into the
> kind
> > of narrator who is more manipulative, ie a writer.
> >
> >
> >