Recluses

[jbor]

Unless Squire Haligast or Wicks drops off the twig in the next few chapters
and is replaced by an automaton then I'd tend to agree with Monica, although
the effigies in that pub's back room's back room that Clément mentions *are*
described as "Wax automata" (291.34). And they are set up to scare visitors
(such as Mason), though they're not really replicas of hermits or
functioning as memento mori. So, the mention could almost be paid as legit.
I guess.

"Father Francis" reminded me of Father Fairing from _V._ for just a moment,
who was a hermit, but that's not the connection that the reviewer is making
at all.

Not having access to the NYRB over here, is the reviewer's name Isabel
Colegate or is that the author's name?

best


Paul wrote:
> 
> Saw a reference to Pynchon in the current New York  Review of Books
> which I don't quite GET.
> 
> The review (not free on line unfortunately) is of a book called A
> Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries and Recluses by
> Isabel
> Colegate.  Anyway it was discussing the  age of the ornamental
> hermets
> so called--how in the eighteenth century a hermitage was often the
> sine
> qua non of any gentleman's estate which necessarily required the
> employ
> of a resident recluse. So to the p-reference:
> 
> "When one well-placed prop called Father Francis died, bringing an
> end
> to the dark talk of death and eternity with which visitors to
> Hawkstone,
> in Shropshire, could be entertained, he was replaced for a while
> (like
> something from Pynchon's Mason & Dixon) by an automaton. When that
> gave
> out, it was replaced by a stuffed hermit, 'adorned with a goat's
> beard.'"
> 
> M&D of course has an automaton or two perhaps,  but  what's the
> point???
> 
> 
> 
> P.
> 
> 
> 
>