MDDM: Ch 34 - Notes and Questions

[jbor]

on 12/2/02 11:38 AM, John Bailey at johnbonbailey at hotmail.com wrote:

>> 345.33 'Gastrick Speech'  ??
>> 
> A burp? the rumblings of the belly? or talk of food, there's plenty of that
> in M&D.

Mason's "verbal diarrhoea"? He is carrying on a bit - "Sensoriums", "Eternal
Youth" and whatnot - after all.

Like the ducks' "pluvial Comforts" (328.10) (i.e. "it's nice weather ... for
ducks") and the "square pegs in round holes" line from a couple of chapters
back, Pynchon seems to enjoy disguising various common puns, cliches and
idioms, dressing them up in verbose or cryptic phraseology like this.
Postmodern play.

>> 338.15 'Don Vicente Lopez' ??
>> 
> 
> Governor of Buenos Aires in the 1850s, born in 1785, don't know if this is
> the same guy.
> 
> OR...an artist who superseded Goya in the royal court's favour.
> 
> Pynchon is up on his Argentinian political history, so I'd suggest the
> first. Can't find any details on him in English, however, and the
> translation programs I use all suck.

There are quite a few references to obscure current events from the 1840s &
1850s  - cf. mention of the famous oarsman, Harry Clasper (1812-1870) at
100.25 - as well as terminology which dates from the 19th century rather
than the 18th. I'm wondering now if the implied narrator, the narrator
narrating Wicks, is in fact situated somewhere in the 1850s or shortly
thereafter - maybe 1861-65 or thereabouts ... ?

I had a couple of questions:

The land about the Harlands' farm is "a region of mariform grades". (332.5)
What's "mariform"?

Anything particularly noteworthy about "Fermat's Last Theorem"? (336.1)

> Excellent hosting by the way, Mr Badger.

I'll second that motion.

best