Ahab & Merleau-Ponty....Graves....

[Dave Monroe]

>From Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds, "Sari, Sorry, and the
Vortex of History: Calendar Reform, Anachronism, and
Language Change in Mason & Dixon," American Literary
History, Vol. 12, Nos. 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2000), pp.
187-215 ...

"Recorded time in Mason & Dixon keeps slipping away,
though it be so much an object of finer and finer
recalibrations; this kind of time does not perform
consecutively, will not stay within its prescribed
lines, just as Pynchon's puns work against
eigteenth-century language reforms.  An odd episode,
for instnace, recalls the watch given to Dixon by
Emerson, unique due to its perfection of chronometry
even while at sea.  How the watch enacts this
seemingly magical feat is by breaking the law of
conservation of energy.  The watch works by perpetual
motions, an affront to both Emerson and Dixon. 
Though, as Emerson say, ''Tis a Law of the Universe,'
'Power may be borrowed,as needed, against repayment
dates deferrable indefinitely' (317).  Dixon
concludes, in the face of the lawbreaking watch, 'If
this Watch be a message, why, it does not seem a kind
one.' (318).  The watch becomes a terrible burden,
needing constant surveillance, such that Dixon dreams
that Emerson has cursed him, on purpose, with the
gift: 'Did he one day cross some line...?' (320). 
Eventually the watch that by its existence breaks one
law in order to mark another is eaten by R.C., a land
surveyor, for whom it has become a real fetish. 
Pynchon's conclusion to this bizarre chronometrical
tale combines a nasty pun with the book's temporal
malady: when asked why he didn't just hide the watch
instead of eating it, R.C. responds, 'There wasn't
Time' (322)." (p. 3)

http://www3.oup.co.uk/alhist/hdb/Volume_12/Issue_01/

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>  
> I wondered about who that "R.C." might be too.

Watch out for download time there, that's a PDF file. 
otherwise, if you have MUSE access, try ...

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_literary_history/v012/12.1hinds.html

And, in general ...

http://www.ipl.org/cgi-bin/ref/litcrit/litcrit.out.pl?ti=mas-264

Okay, now I gotta sort this Rosicrucian et al. thing
out for myself, so ...

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