MD3PAD 325-327

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

this is rather cryptic.  It's as if R.C. has internalized timekeeping; but of a hybrid sort, using machined parts yet working on occult premises.

Why is Emerson is gleeful even to the point of hurting himself, upon hearing the news?

Is there a relationship to RC in Vineland?
And/or to the "Rosy Cross" ?

Is there a parallel being drawn (possible surveying pun) between applying measurement to land and swallowing a timepiece: an awkward interface between organic and mechanical but one that in certain circumstances is irresistible?




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Toby G Levy [mailto:tobylevy at juno.com]
> Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2006 04:18 AM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: MD3PAD 325-327
> 
>         R.C. tries to tell his wife that the watch lulls him to sleep
> with its ticking in his stomach, but R.C.'s wife is determined to sleep
> in another room far away from the sound of the watch. R.C.'s wife soon
> is reluctant to have sex with him in fear that the watch is somehow
> witnessing their acts.
> 
>         Commissioner Shippen suggests that they perform surgery to
> remove the watch, and R.C. attempts to throw it up but fails.
> 
>         Dixon writes a letter to Emerson telling him that the watch has
> been swallowed.  He waits weeks, moping, for a reply. Eventually a
> letter comes from Mrs. Emerson, saying that Emerson was ecstatic at the
> fate of the watch and danced a jig, during which he stepped on something
> that caused him a small injury, and he is lying in bed, promising to
> explain his happiness in a future letter. Emerson himself adds a
> postscript to the letter: "Time is the Space that may not be seen."
> 
>         Chapter 33 begins on page 327. Commissioner Chew invites Mason
> and Dixon to join them at Christiana Bridge, a village in Delaware near
> the Tangent Line, where the commissioners frequent an ale house known as
> Mary Janvier's Many businessmen from Philadelphia like to pass time
> there.
> 
> Toby
>