MDDM Last Transit Ch. 74 (Messier's medal)

[jbor]

Terrance wrote:

> 
> Yes, it seems that the narrator (not Wicks) has access to the Minutes,
> the official report, Mason's field report(s). So I was in error when I
> suggested that Wicks and the family have the Minutes.

I think the more salient point is not who has access to the report (and I'm
assuming that Pynchon did consult this), but who invests the paragraph
describing the great Comet of 1769 at the top of page 726 with those
references to the birth of Napoleon, and compares it to the birth of Jesus.
What I suspect you'll find is that the comments which Mason makes here, and
which he admits to Maskelyne he has "[n]o idea" about", bear a resemblance
to what Charles Messier (note the initials, too, and think of Stendhal's _Le
Rouge et le noir_ perhaps?) wrote in his memoir published in 1808:

Grande comète qui a paru à la naissance de Napoléon le Grand, découverte le
8 aôut 1769 et observée pendant quatre mois. (Great comet which has appeared
at the birth of Napoleon the Great, discovered on August 8, 1769 and
observed during four months). Published by Delance, Paris, 1808.

http://messier.man.szczecin.pl/xtra/history/m-pub.html

http://www.messiermarathon.com/about.htm

In later life Messier worked closely with Herschel, and back in that
subjunctive chapter which closes the central section of the novel there's a
reference to the renaming of Herschel's planet:

    It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later,
    will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its
    official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus. (708.23)

The name Uranus didn't "come into common use until about 1850".

http://planets.astronomy.net/uranus.html

The "more lately" in the narration here is significant I think, and it
locates "the narrator", or this narrator at least, sometime in the second
half of the nineteenth century. There are several other references in the
novel to support this idea.

I don't disagree that the way that much of the narrative in _M&D_ is
articulated is comparable to the Stencil chapters in _V._, and various
sequences in _GR_, but I think we have quite a different understanding of
how and why Pynchon creates these "Stencilized" histories.

best

 

> However, I'm not sure the easier formula you suggest works out at all.
> Mason's is not the only Mood at play here. Mood--Humor, Grammar, even
> Logic, I think. 
> 
> Anyway, it all very Stencilized and down the rabbit hole through the
> looking glass. 
> You note the that Mason's dream of the Native's suicide reminds us of GR
> and I agree, but the dream reminds me most of Mondaugen.
> 
> Of course there is also a history that Pynchon has dug up that I suspect
> is not much recorded in the history books.
> 
> BTW, I suspect that All Sins Might Wash Away In Tears Unwept (728) is a
> ironikal allusion to John's Rev.