dialectic-despair

[David Gentle]

From: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>
> Cool passage. Although I didn't notice it, but maybe Pynchon also put in 
> some analogues of "awesome", "sucks", and "cool"? He he, what those would 
> be in the 18th century English?
>
Presumably "as" is the word. If you replace "as" with "like" you get:
"Oh, aye, at home they're on at me about it without Mercy, she tells him, 
"I'm, like, but I _like_ black,"-- yet my Uncle, he's, like, 'Strangers will 
take you for I don't know what,' hey-- I don't know what, either.  Do you?"

>>From: "David Casseres" <david.casseres at gmail.com>
>>To: "David Brodeur" <dbrodeur at verizon.net>
>>CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>Subject: Re: RE: dialectic-despair
>>Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:37:41 -0800
>>
>>On 11/13/06, David Brodeur <dbrodeur at verizon.net> wrote:
>>>I just finished a second reading of Mason & Dixon and found that the
>>>language was one of the great pleasures of the book. It's not, of course,
>>>really 18th century, but a unique voice that Pynchon created for this 
>>>novel.
>>>He has a great deal of fun with the language, too, with amusing
>>>"translations" of modern idiom, subtle subversions of our expectations of
>>>18th century language, and other games.
>>
>>Viz, Amy the Goth Milk-Maid of Manhattan, on p. 400:
>>
>>Amy is dress'd from Boots to Bonnet all in different Articles of
>>black, a curious choice of color for a milkmaid, it seems to Mason,
>>tho', as he has been instructed ever to remind himself, this is
>>New-York, where other customs prevail. "Oh, aye, at home they're on at
>>me about it without Mercy, she tells him, "I'm, as, but I _like_
>>black,"-- yet my Uncle, he's, as, 'Strangers will take you for I don't
>>know what,' hey-- I don't know what, either.  Do you?"
>>
>>It goes on, one of my favorite passages.