Fun stuff in M&D

[Dave Monroe]

--- Daniel Harper <daniel_harper at earthlink.net> wrote:

> I'm on page 58 of Mason & Dixon -- a much easier
> read than I was anticipating ...

You get used to it quickly ...
 
> ... and seems like a really amazing book.

And indeed it is ...

> But instead of talking about the details, a couple
> of fun little bits:

God is in the details, Pynchon is in the fun.  Well,
okay, it's ALL Pynchon, and it's ALL fun, but ...
 
> 1.) From page 10 of the hardcover:
> 
> "Keep away from harmful Substances, in particular
> Coffee, Tobacco, and Indian Hemp. If you must use
> the latter, do not inhale."
> 
> A Clinton reference in an 18th century historical
> novel? I laughed out loud -- that was unexpected,
> even for Pynchon.

Nixon (Lot 49, GR), Reagan (VL), Bush (?), Clinton
(M&D), Bush (AtD) ...

"Except for the succession of the criminally insane
who have enjoyed power since 1945, including the power
to do something about it, the rest of us poor sheep
have always been stuck with simple, standard fear."
(SL, Intro, p.   )
 
> But the real classic:
> 
> 2.) Why would you call a talking dog a Learned
> English Dog? Perhaps so you can get away with a
> three word phrase, buried in the middle of page 22:
> 
> "The L.E.D. blinks, shivers, nods in a resign'd
> way."
> 
> I refuse to believe that Pynchon wasn't fully
> cognizant of a blinking light emitting diode there.

A.greed ...

> So offhand that I didn't even process it as
> unusual at first.

I think I negelcted to make the connection explicit
last time through here ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=60225

But here's a nice note on that, uh, bit ("no puns
where none intended," to paraphrase Samuel Beckett)
...

Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 11:15:02 +1100 (EST)
From: Matt Treyvaud <m.treyvaud@[omitted]>
To: pynchon-l@[omitted]
Subject: "The L.E.D. blinks"

On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, Erik Pohl wrote:

> Douglas Hofstadter wrote _Godel, Escher, Bach_
> about a lot of things, including whether machines
> can have "souls" or not.  One of the major
> interesting threads in the novel is Hofstadter's
> Western examination of the koan described by the
> LED (I think it's the same one) and the concept
> of mu.  Mu, based on that description, reminds me
> of an exluded middle, if ya get my drift.
 
Yeah, pretty much. From my reading, I get the feeling
that "mu" is the answer you give when neither "yes"
nor "no" are even possible as an answer, which seems
pretty excluded-middleish..

Since an electronic LED can only be on or off (you can
vary how bright it is by changing the rest of the
circuit, but the LED itself is still a binary on/off
device, afaik) maybe the blinking L.E.D. is an
observation on the impossibility of expressing "mu" in
terms of the age of reason -> aristotlean syllogistic
western thought -> modern applications of
technology... the closest you can get to "neither on
nor off" is "on, off, on, off.."

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9812&msg=34650&keywords=blinking




 
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