MDDM Ch. 38 Summary & Notes

[jbor]

At the end of the previous chapter the climactic confrontation between Mr
Dimdown and Armand had interrupted the chef's tale. Ch. 38 shifts back to
the narrative frame of Ch. 36, and opens with a retrospective recount of the
scene in the Knockwoods' Inn following that encounter.

Dimdown accuses Armand of being a "fabulating little swine" and of having no
right to speak of, let alone be in, America. While Mrs Knockwood unlocks the
rifle cabinet her husband tries to calm the situation between the drunken
xenophobe and the fiery chef. Dimdown's lunge at Armand's heart is foiled by
the intervention of Armand's protector, the invisible duck.

Luise Redzinger, impressed and still attracted to the diminutive Frenchman,
places her hand on Armand's arm, and they continue to compare cooking notes.
In the following days the relationship between Luise and Armand becomes more
intimate; the duck doesn't interfere but does create something of an initial
dilemma for the two lovers. Witnessing the actual mechanics of carnal
consummation cools the duck's ardour somewhat, however (384.10) ... and
promptly thereupon Vaucanson's monster - whether modelled by Pynchon on
either or both Daisy or Daffy, er, Duck - disappears from proceedings.

As well as causing tensions, the claustrophobia brought about by being
snowbound at the Inn leads members of the company into morose and unhealthy
reflections. Indeed, "young Cherrycoke" lapses into vivid and ghoulish
"speculation" regarding similarities between the Christian Sacrament of the
Eucharist and "Cannibalism", these unfolding in his day book, in a
roundabout and not altogether logical way, to a "practical" recognition of
the land-rights of the Native Americans. (386.23)

Armand begins to take an avuncular interest in Mitzi Redzinger, and the
young virgin to help him out in the kitchen. As a result of this emerging
familial affection, Mitzi rescues and restores Mr Dimdown's blade and flirts
with him in an effort to secure a rapprochement between he and Armand. She
confides to Dimdown the chef's late aversion to cutting (even vegetables!),
while "Philip" also admits to his own lack of duelling experience, but
Mitzi, intuitive as well as sensitive it seems, has already guessed. "And
presently, in the afternoon Lull between meals, the peace is made ... "

The scene degenerates into a series of rather loose analogies connecting
various human industries and inventions - steel-forging, pastry-making,
gold-beating, "lamination", the "Leyden Pile", playing cards, hydraulic
systems, the printing press. Finally, Philip Dimdown's secret identity as a
pro-independence pamphleteer is revealed as - another subtle shift - Wicks
concludes this portion of the tale.

***

383.3 "Toque"  a chef's tall white hat.

383.26 "Beaver *Bourguignon* [...] Beaver *soufflé*"  A type of stew and,
well, a soufflé. I suspect a rather gross obscenity in the sudden focus on
concocted "beaver" foodstuffs at this point in the scene, somewhat à la Kurt
Vonnegut (_Breakfast of Champions_ I think, or perhaps _God Bless You, Mr
Rosewater_ or _Welcome to the Monkey House_). Neither Armand nor Luise
appear to recognise the anachronistic double entendre, however, though they
do seem to get things cooking in that department before too long.

384.11 "an erotic Life"  I think Pynchon's point with Vaucanson's duck's
intertextuality with 20th C. cartoons might have something to do with the
Warner Bros character's apparent androgyny/asexuality. Most of those Warner
Bros characters (excepting Pepé le Pew), in fact ... unlike Disney's
characters, whose domestic arrangements often mirror conservative family
values, and which, by comparison in the Pynchonian universe, are just so
much bad opera .... (?)

384.12 "Niveal Confinement"  = niveous adj. resembling snow [17th C. from
Latin  *niveus*, from *nix* snow] ?

384.15 " [...] and it read, 'No King... '"  What Squire Haligast claims to
have seen miraculously blazoned upon the colonial clouds could be a
variation on either James I's (James VI of Scotland) 1604 pronouncement -
"No bishop, no King" - made to a deputation of Presbyterians from the Church
of England, seeking religious tolerance in England (in W. Barlow, _Sum and
Substance of the Conference_ 1604, p. 82), or else William Penn's Quakerite
proclamation "No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no
cross, no crown." (1669) Or ... ?

384.28 "Brook Taylor"  (1685-1731) English mathematician, born at Edmonton,
studied at St Johns College Cambridge, and in 1715 published his *Methodus*,
the foundation of the Calculus of Finite Differences, containing 'Taylor's
Theorem'. In 1714-18 he was secretary to the Royal Society. His
*Contemplatio Philosophica* (1719) was edited with a Life by Sir W. Young
(1793).

385.24 "Le Gastreau's fam'd article in the *Encyclopédie*"  ?

385.25 "the Pot-Lid indeed being a particular Hobby-Horse of Armand's"  cf.
Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_:

      I own I could never envy Didius in these kinds of fancies of
    his:--But every man to his own taste.--Did not Dr Kunastroikus,
    that great man, at his leisure hours, take the greatest delight
    imaginable in combing of asses' tails, and plucking the dead hairs
    out with his teeth, though he had tweezers always in his pocket?
    Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the wisest of men in all
    ages, not excepting Solomon himself,--have they not had their
    HOBBY-HORSES;--their running horses,--their coins and their cockle-
    shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their
    pallets,--their maggots and their butterflies?--and so long as a
    man rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and quietly along the King's
    highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,--pray,
    Sir, what have either you or I to do with it? [Vol. I, ch. 7]

    --*De gustibus non est disputandum;--that is, there is no disputing
    against HOBBY-HORSES; and, for my part, I seldom do ... [Ch. 8]

385.29 "Voltaire's remark about Gas- and As-tronomers"  ?

385.34 "Haimo of Halberstadt"  ?

386.4 "Damascus Steel"  n. (History) a hard flexible steel with wavy
markings caused by forging the metal in strips: used for sword blades.

389.14 "the great Figg" James Figg (d. 1736) English fencer and pugilist,
born at Thame, who gave displays of quarterstaff, fencing and boxing in
Marylebone, and ran a booth at Southwark, is regarded as one of the greatest
of 18th century sporting figures. He is portrayed in Hogarth's 'Rake's
Progress' and 'Southwark Fair'.

389.16 "Professor Tisonnier" *tisonnier* (Fr. noun masculine) = "poker"

389.21 "the old Spadroon"  What's a spadroon?

390.3 "Leyden Pile"  pile n. (Metallurgy) an arrangement of wrought-iron
bars that are to be heated and worked into a single bar (?)

390.9 "an unbound heap of Broadsides" broadside n. another name for
broadsheet, a newspaper having a large format

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