MDDM: Ch 34 - Notes and Questions

[Dave Monroe]

Flying M&D-less at the moment, but ...

--- Scott Badger <lupine at ncia.net> wrote:
> 
> 345.33 'Gastrick Speech'  ??

Cf. "cryptick Intestinal Commentary"  (M&D, Ch. 29, p.
289) ...

Main Entry: ven·tril·o·quism 
Pronunciation: ven-'tri-l&-"kwi-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin ventriloquus ventriloquist, from
Latin ventr-, venter + loqui to speak; from the belief
that the voice is produced from the ventriloquist's
stomach
Date: circa 1797
: the production of the voice in such a way that the
sound seems to come from a source other than the vocal
organs of the speaker
- ven·tri·lo·qui·al  /"ven-tr&-'lO-kwE-&l/ adjective
- ven·tri·lo·qui·al·ly  /-&-lE/ adverb

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

And, again, from Steven Connor, Dumbstruck: A Cultural
History of Ventriloquism (New York: Oxford UP, 2000),
Ch. 2, "Earth, Breath, Frenzy: The Delphic Oracle,"
pp.47-74 ...

   "Even where they do not literally identify the
influx of demons through and utterance from the
genitals, other descriptions of the oracle from the
early centuries of the Christian era onwards seem to
insist more generally upon the importance of the ideas
either of a vaginal opening or invaginated hollowness.
Accounts speak generally of the pythia's 'descent' to
give her oracles, which has encouraged in some the
belief that the physical space of the oracle was
didvided between the place where the consulter's
enquiry was voiced and the inner space, either below
the ground, in an inner space, or behind a veil, from
which the pythia gave her response.  Thus, diffeent
accounts speak of the pythia delivering her oracles
from the adyton, the secret inner space of th temple,
or from the stomion.  Stomion signifies a mouth or
opening, and supplies the English word stomach because
of this reference ....   The English word stomach is
apt to suggest belly-speaking [ventriloquism] because
the word signifies at once a kind of burial in the
depths of the body and an opening outwards.  The
stomion of the oracle seems to have suggested to many
that the space of consultation was a vocal space.  But
it was also an interior, or visceral space.  Entering
the oracle, the enquirers thus appeared to enter a
resonant or speaking body." (p. 54)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0201&msg=64469&sort=date

And thanks not only to Mutualcode, for reminding me,
however obliquely, of this passage ca. "Cloaca" ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0201&msg=64436&sort=date

http://www.newmuseum.org/Press_Office/Press_Releases/Delvoye%20release.htm

... not only to Perfesser Connor hisself, for turning
me on to Felicia Miller Frank's The Mechanical Song:
Women, Voice and the Artificial in ineteenth Cnetury
French Narrative (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1995;
q.v.), but also to Mr. Badger for precisely NOT
badgering me (a resident of the Badger State) into
stepping aside on this chapter.  I'd never have had
the time to live up to even my own standards, and I
simply never would have lived up to his.  But I gotta
run, finally horning in on those fabled free press
screenings of yr now a major motion pictures, so ...

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