MDDM Ch. 70 Additional Resources

[Dave Monroe]

   "'So long as he doesn't bring the Golem,'
stipulates Mason.  'He brings the Golem,-- well,--
what do they eat, for example?  What are their
sanitary Requirements?  How shall Mo McClean, who's
already striking himself daily upon the Pate with his
own Ledgers, find the additional Resources?'
   "'Yet, mightn't we turn the Creature to some useful
work,-- say upon the Visto?  Pulling up Trees by their
Roots,-- clearing out all those un-sightly Stumps?'
   "The Axmen would never hear of it.  Next two-story
House we came to, we'd both be taken upstairs and
defenestrated.'" (M&D, Ch. 70, p. 685)

Having consulted primarily ...

Idel, Moshe.  Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical
   Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid.
   Albany: SUNY Press, 1990.

http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=50342

And ...

Scholem, Gershom.  "The Idea of the Golem."
   On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism.  Trans.
   Ralph Mannheim.  New York: Schocken, 1969.
   158-204.

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0805210512

Among other resources ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0205&msg=66790&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0204&msg=66436&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0205&msg=66746&sort=date

... I've so far found no reason for Mason to be
concerned, for either the Golem or Mo McClean, having
found no mention of golems needing to eat, much less
doing so nevertheless, much, much less excreting as a
result.  Idel, however, does have have a chapter (15)
on "Golem and Sex" (pp. 232-41) ...

And, while I suspect Mason's sensitivity to labor
concerns isn't exactly Luddite here, he's nonetheless 
wise not to replace workers with automation.   From
Gershom Scholem, "The Idea of the Golem" ...

   "In the late forms of the legend, which arose in
seventeenth-century Poland, a new elemnt appears; the
servant become dangerous.... the sources are legends
about Rabbi Elijah Baal Shem, rabbi of Chelm, who died
in 1583... A more explicit account of Rabbi Elijah's
activities ... was written in 1674 by Christoph
Arnold.

... although the image [i.e., Golem] itself cannot
speak, it understands what is said to it and
commanded; among the Polish Jews it does all kinds of
housework, but is not allowed to leave the house.  On
the forehead of the image, tehy write: emeth, that is,
truth.  But an image of this kind grows each day;
though very samll at first, it ends by becoming larger
thatn all those in the house.  In order to take away
his strength, which ultimately becomes a threat to all
those in the house, they quickly erase the first
letter aleph from the word emeth on his forehead, so
tehre remains only the word meth, that is, death. 
When this is done, the golem collapses and dissolves
into the clay or mud he was ... They say that a baal
shem in Poland ... made a golem who became so large
that the rabbi could no longer reach his forhead to
erase the letter e.  He thought up a trick, namely
that the golem, being his servant, should remove his
boots, supposing that when the golem bent over, he
should erase the letters.  And so it happened, but
when the golem became mud agin, his whole weight fell
on the rabbi ... and crushed him. 

[...]

   "Still more detailed is the report of another
contemporary, who wrote in 1682 that, 'apart from
speaking,' these creatures 'perform all sorts of human
activities for forty days and carry letters like
messengers wherever they are sent, even a long way;
but ifafter forty days the piece of parchment is not
taken from their forehead, they inflict great damge
upon the person or possessions of their master or his
family.'  Here we have two new elements: for one
thing, the period of service is limited to forty days
....  The other new feature is the dangerous character
of the golem, mnetioned in all the variants.  This
golem has prodigious strength and grows beyond
measure.  He destroys the world, or in any case does a
good deal of damage....  Unless this tellurian force
is held in check by the diine name, it rises up in
blind and destructive fury.  This earth magic awakens
chaotic forces.  The story of Adam is reversed...."
(pp. 199-202)

Cf. ...

"There is a long folk history of this figure, the
Badass. He is usually male, and while sometimes
earning the quizzical tolerance of women, is almost
universally admired by men for two basic virtues: he
is Bad, and he is Big. Bad meaning not morally evil,
necessarily, more like able to work mischief on a
large scale. What is important here is the amplifying
of scale, the multiplication of effect."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

And note "visuality" here, from "Visto" to
"un-sightly" to "defenestration" (previous references
to which have already been noted)...

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