MDDM Ch. 69

[jbor]

665.13 "Chicken on a Line?" - a living weathercock ?

665.19-23 "being in America ... among these Lawyer-craz'd People, a Vengeful
Pursuit after Reimbursement ... may beggar our Mission." This is a constant
theme and object of satire throughout Pynchon's work.

666.5 a Voice unlocaliz'd may act powerfully as a moral Center - Cf.
detached, omniscient narration in fiction, which Pynchon's narratives resist
in order not to reveal this "moral Center". Ergo, the Duck.

666.20 "I've been thinking about that Chicken today." (Mason)
       "Aye, Ah knoah how lonely it gets out here, tho' aren't they said to
    be moody...?" (Dixon)

Again, this stand-up routine is way too risqué for Wicks and the drawing
room context.

667 the Decoy - Cf. "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck ... "

668.5 "Listen to what Voltaire wrote about me ... "

"without the shitting duck, Voltaire commented wryly, there would be nothing
to remind us of the glory of France"

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,650977,00.html

http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/pschmid1/essays/pynchon/vaucanson.html

http://www.automates-anciens.com/pages_de_cadre/ensemble_cadres.htm

http://www.automates-anciens.com/

668.7 "la Le More"  ?

668.11 "Ordure" = excrement, dung; obscenity, foul language

668.12 "Besozzi"

Cf. the Oboick Reveries of the Besozzis (413.11)

Alessandro (1702-1775) and Carlo Besozzi (1738-1791):

http://www.musicabona.com/cdshop3/besozzi01.html

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/002-6512614-6629625?tag=dr
johnholleman&keyword=alessandro+besozzi&mode=classical-music

http://www.music.indiana.edu/musicref/oboesec.htm

And cf. Aunt Euphy once "pretending to *be* an Automaton Oboe player"
(669.34)

668.19 "any *Bas-mondain*" - any peasant

669.23 "And Men of Science," cries Dixon, "May be but the simple Tools of
others, with no more idea of what they are about, than a Hammer knows of a
House."

Indeed.

669.35 "Signore Drivelli"  ?

669.15 " ... in India they understand how important the breath is, being
indeed the Soul in different form ... " (Aunt Euphy) - yoga  ?

669.25-670 Hugh Crawfford's "Mountain Dulcimer" and his "wild Note-scape,
almost minor, almost Celtick"  ? Dixon's 'Westering'  ?

673.7 ... as a Chain's length may, upon the clement Page, pass little
notic'd, whilst in an Ambuscade, may reckon as, perhaps, all,-- or Nothing.

Another reflexive trope: the world as text.

673.11 Lyra and Cygnus

http://www.allthesky.com/constellations/cygnus/

Mythological Background:

Lyra is thought to represent the harp of Orpheus. On older skymaps Lyra is
represented as a bird: Vultur, the Vulture. Together with the Cygnus, the
Swan, and Aquila, the Eagle, it is hunted by Hercules. Another story says
that Mercury invented the lyre by placing strings across the back of a
tortoise shell. So sometimes in early descriptions this constellation is
also drawn as a tortoise.

http://www.seds.org/Maps/Stars_en/Fig/lyra.html

http://www.dibonsmith.com/lyr_con.htm

http://www.lyra.org/lyra.html

Mythological Background

Cygnus, the swan, is one of the the two birds (Aquila, the eagle, is the
second), which are hunted by Hercules. Yet it seems that the two birds were
lucky and have escaped. It is assumed that these birds (together with a
third one, the Vulture - nowadays the constellation Lyra) represent the
Stymphalian Birds - one of the tasks of Hercules.

http://www.seds.org/Maps/Stars_en/Fig/cygnus.html

673.18 the Delaware Chief Catfish, his Lady, and his Nephew  ?

673.20 Strings of Wampom

"Wampum, or shell beads, evolved briefly into a formal currency after
European and native contact"

http://www.nativetech.org/wampum/wamphist.htm

673.34 Dunkard Creek

http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/rivers/dunkard.htm

673.35 the venerable Prisqueetom, Prince of the Delawares and brother to
their King  ?

674.21 "*Fatum in Denario vertit*" (Mason) - [Leave?] fate to the turn of a
coin  ?

674.31 "'Doing a Chapman'" (Crawfford)    ?

675.2 "Catawbas"

http://www.dickshovel.com/Catawba.html

http://www.sciway.net/hist/indians/catawba.html

675.32 a *casus belli*  an act or situation justifying or precipitating war

NB the paragraph at 675-6 where the narration emulates Mason & Dixon's train
of thought, momentarily shifting into and then out of a type of dual
stream-of-consciousness. Again, it's almost certainly not Wicks.

676.27 "No longer frets th' intemperate Jay/ withal, the Siskin chirpeth
not." (Mr Barnes)

If not a Tox couplet, certainly a toxic one.

677.4 NB the Native Americans "Subjunctive World" vs "*our* number'd and
dreamless Indicative" (NB that "our" - again, not Wicks here)

677.17 a great Bridge, fashioned of Iron  ?

677.22 "May we cross?" asks Dixon.
       "May we not cross?" asks Mason.

An interesting contrast, taken up in the apparent reversal of attitudes in
the next chapter.

677.34 They wake.  ?!

best