Recluses

[Paul Mackin]

jbor wrote:

> 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

Sorry I didn't make that clear. The author is Isabel Colegate. The reviewer is
Pico Iyer. It's the reviewer who makes the M&D connection. He's a jounalist and
soon to be published novelist. Wrote The Global Soul, about modern alienation.
International background. His parents were East Indian He travels around a
lot.   Educated in England. Lived a long time in California but now lives in
rural Japan with a Japanese wife. The couple can converse only in a kind of
pidgen. The forthcoming novel is about Islam and California. I get all this
info on him from an online review of the nonfiction piece. Not a rave. Can't
seem to retrieve a link at the moment. Might be a clue to what Iyer is talking
about. Will try again in a while..

P.


> 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.
> >
> >
> >
> >