MDDM Last Transit Ch. 74

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 7:59 AM
Subject: MDDM Last Transit Ch. 74


>
> 718.4 Some horrible Boswell pursues them, asking questions - a journalist,
> of course
>

James Boswell, 1740-95
Best remembered today as friend and biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson, Boswell
was an extraordinary figure of eighteenth-century society. Vain yet
good-natured, foolish yet charming, he was also conceited and a
hypochondriac with a drinking problem. He forced himself upon eminent
people, and bragged about the great men he knew. David Hume thought him a
bit crazy. Yet for years Boswell moved in the same circles as Sheridan,
Goldsmith, Rousseau, Voltaire and Walpole. And he was an inveterate
notetaker.
http://www.ebs.hw.ac.uk/EDC/edinburghers/james-boswell.html

I had my Boswell, once," Mason tells Boswell, "Dixon and I. We had a joint
Boswell. Preacher nam'd Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev'rything down, just like
you, Sir. Have you," twiring his hand in Ellipses,-- "you know, ever...had
one yourself? If I'm not prying."
"Had one what?"
"Hum...a Boswell, Sir,-- I mean, of your own. Well you couldn't very well
call him that, being one yourself,-- say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room
who has haunted you, preserving your ev'ry spoken remark,--"
"Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion,--
think," armsweep south, "as all civiliz'd Britain gathers at this hour, how
much shapely Expression, from the titl'd Gambler, the Barmaid's Suitor, the
offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the
Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those
voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the
Void of forgetfulness?"
--Mason & Dixon, Chapter 76, pg. 747
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_quotes.html

"an inveterate notetaker" -- is Boswell the historical figure Pynchon took
as an idea for the good Rev'd.?

Otto

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