Inconvenience

[Alex Colter]

Always thought 'Inconvenience' was a reference to the Introduction of
Swift's 'A Tale of a Tub':

"Whoever has an ambition to be heard in a crowd must press, and squeeze,
and thrust, and climb with indefatigable pains, till he has exalted himself
to a certain degree of altitude above them. Now, in all assemblies, though
you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that
over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult
point, it being as hard to get quit of number as of hell.


*"--Evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est." {59}*


To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain
edifices in the air; but whatever practice and reputation these kind of
structures have formerly possessed, or may still continue in, not excepting
even that of Socrates when he was suspended in a basket to help
contemplation, I think, with due submission, they seem to labour under two
inconveniences. First, that the foundations being laid too high, they have
been often out of sight and ever out of hearing. Secondly, that the
materials being very transitory, have suffered much from inclemencies of
air, especially in these north-west regions."

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>wrote:

> cool. looks like I have some time for reading....
>
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 11:22 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Apropos nice: when it comes to prose style there are very few
> > novelists as brilliant as Patrick O'Brian.
> >
> > 2011/10/31 Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>:
> >>> inconvenience, the mortal inconvenience, of rising too high."
> >>
> >> Nice.
> >>
> >> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 10:39 PM, Dave Monroe
> >> <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12110386
> >>>
> >>> Inconvenience, The
> >>>
> >>> 3; Chums of Chance's hydrogen skyship; in Mason & Dixon H.M.S.
> >>> Inconvenience was a ship that Fender-Belly Bodine once sailed in.
> >>> Another possible source for the skyship's name can be found in Patrick
> >>> O'Brian's 1988 novel, The Letter of Marque, from a scene in which the
> >>> naval surgeon Stephen Maturin remarks to a British admiral, "We were
> >>> speaking of balloons, sir, and you were trying to recollect the
> >>> details of a device you had thought of for doing away with the
> >>> inconvenience, the mortal inconvenience, of rising too high." (p.
> >>> 3875, The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels, W. W. Norton, 2004).
> >>>
> >>> http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
> >> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
> >> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
> >> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
> >> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
> >>
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20111031/7a7e3c20/attachment.html>