MDMD: 411.20 "that timeless _Encyclopedia-Light_"

[Doug Millison]

411.20 "that timeless *Encyclopedia-Light*"  the Age of Enlightenment (?)

I think Pynchon here alludes to the quality of illustrations in an
encyclopedia, strangely stylized, lifeless, idealized -- the kind of
historical representation that removes human feeling and complexity to
produce a "just-the-facts-ma'm" portrayal of what must have been a messy,
complicated, dangerous reality -- in the airbrushed version of  the
medieval master-apprentice economic relationship that is thus idealized in
such an historical approach,  "all noxious smokes and gases were being
vented someplace distant, invisible"; soon enough the reader is told that
this scene is  LeSpark's fantasy of "how the world might be", a vision of
industry without the unpleasant details of the exploited workers' existence
-- Cherrycoke editorializes on this aspect on 412, "What is not visible in
his rendering [...] is the Negro Slavery, that goes on making such no doubt
exquisite moments possible,-- the inhuman ill-usage, the careless abundance
of pain inflicted, the unpric'd Coercion necessary to yearly Profits beyond
the projectings even of proud Satan [...] these undeclared secular terms in
the Equations of Proprietary Happiness."   Pynchon here puts into
Cherrycoke's mouth a stern denunciation of capitalist exploitation,
embedded in a nuanced observation of the way history can reflect the
interests of those who report it (LeSpark's Currier & Ives fantasy,
Cherrycoke's moralizing).