Voltaire quote in Mason and Dixon
Dave Monroe
monrovius at yahoo.com
Sun Sep 14 14:51:13 CDT 2003
By the way, 'cos Damian axed, I believe that that
"shitting duck" derives entirely from a turn of
(para)phrase in Gaby Wood's Living Dolls (UK ed.),
a.k.a. Edison's Eve (US ed.) ...
"... without the shitting duck, Voltaire commented
wryly, there would be nothing to remind us of the
glory of France. It was made of gold-plated copper,
but it was the same size as a living duck."
http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,650977,00.html
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=16058
... 'cos it's certainly not in Voltaire's phrase or
Pynchon's quotation of it. She's simply dovetailing a
Voltaire trans. with a play on the phrase "sitting
duck," is all. Others simply repeated it, perhaps
even as if it was a translation. See, e.g., ...
http://bunyip.blogspot.com/2003_05_25_bunyip_archive.html
But while I'm at it, I'm also reminded here of my very
wonderful visit to Wim Delvoye's Cloaca (2001) ...
http://www.cloaca.be/
http://www.newmuseum.org/more_exh_cloaca.php
So I hope that's been of some help. Sorry, I see I
was not on the stick when last we covered this ...
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0208&msg=69356&sort=date
So thanks again to M. le Professeur Petillon ...
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9705&msg=14103&sort=date
--- Damian Hey <dhey92000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Beyond this, The "shitting duck" translation is not
> of the French phrase Pynchon wrote....
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