MDDM 64 Captain Zhang 2

[jbor]

Sam wrote:

> 626-4 Lord Huang, a very rich trader with seven eligible daughters.
> 
> Couldn't find anything on seven daughters except this from Pennsylvania (c.
> 1800): http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/family/huntingdon.html      Mr.
> Steel was a man of medium height, heavy and erect frame, communicated freely
> and intelligently, was kind and courteous to all, and to young men in
> particular, and ... lived to an advanced age. He left behind him.....  and six
> or seven daughters....

Perhaps:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/daughters000420.html

http://www.oxfordancestors.com/daughters.html

> But on seven sisters:
> 
> The Pleiad(e)s were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione...
> http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/~gibson/pleiades/pleiades_myth.html
> 
> From Down Under: _The Two Wise Men and the Seven Sisters_ told by Josie Boyle
> http://www.dreamtime.net.au/seven/index.cfm
> (this is not a reference to Hsi and Ho, though they are astronomers.)
> 
> Never heard Pleiades called the Seven Sisters of Industry (628- last two
> lines) ... found something about the ancient Chinese using the appearance of
> Pleiades in the Spring sky to indicate the time for Spring planting.

I think it ties back to Lord Huang's reference to "the Market, ... the
inscrutable Power we serve, an invisible-Handed god without Mercy." (627.32)

Cf. 411.11 "the workings of the Invisible Hand"  or economic progress, as
described in Adam Smith's _The Wealth of Nations_ (1776):

http://www.cyberus.ca/choose.sustain/invisble.html

http://pass.maths.org.uk/issue14/features/smith/

> 627-5 "Can you predict when the next Eclipse will happen?"
> 
> Lord Huang is setting up his competitive intel department...  which may be
> shady business but it makes Ho and Hsi wealthy.  That is until they
> miscalculate and either get Huang killed or themselves banished...(628)

I like the way Pynchon has Zhang provide two mutually-exclusive versions of
the ending - the "moral" - of this tale of Hsi and Ho. Either the bumbling
astronomers are banished and beggared for their self-indulgences and
incompetence, or else they luck out again because of it and get the lot:
"Lands, Fortune, Army, and Harem of Daughters". This conceit speaks to the
theme of the indeterminacy of "truth" in the telling of histories:

"Is the baby smiling, or is it just gas? Which do you want it to be?" Etc.

best
>