M&D readins c1p1

[Lemuel Underwing]

*"...yards of purple stuff..."*

I always took this to mean a sort of cheap imitation Silk, Silk being an
interesting character throughout the Narrative (Susannah Peach's silk
wherein a secret silk-road shortcut lies. Also, does the Nameless concubine
wear silk to allure whomever the Jesuits are entertaining? I have trouble
reading that bit of the book, it is hard).
Purple, of course, being the color of Royalty, thus marking the family as
Loyalists, confirmed only a few lines later.

The Card-Table is call'd sinister, but can it be a sort of *Borgesian
Labyrinth* *"...that neither the Twins nor their Sister can say they have
been to the end of."* ?

The next sentence is full of allusion,
*"Upon the Wall, banish'd to this den of Parlor Apes for its Remembrance of
a Time better forgotten, reflecting most of the Room--"*

On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 7:20 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:

> The most interesting piece of furniture is probably the Card-Table,
> wandering Heart, hidden compartments... maybe left over from LeSpark's
> earlier days?
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Lemuel Underwing <luunderwing at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> *The Cape! The Wind! The Crew! The Clock! The Duck! ...g-giant stalks of
>> Hemp! *
>> I have to keep from drinking myself to death as I am living, in the wake
>> of the Transit, at my parent's home
>> as we sort some Legal Issues (marijuana, folks). This shall be part of
>> the Antidote.
>> So I'm going to be posting some of my "readings" of Mason & Dixon,
>> possibly my favorite book of all time.
>> *List-Characters & Rantings are Welcome!*
>> Let us start with p1c1:
>>
>> *"Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs..."* (of course an allusion to the
>> beginning of Gravity's Rainbow)
>> *
>> starr'd* is an interesting word to use obviously intimating the shape
>> Snow-Balls make upon impact,
>> but could one possibly say, without a hint of the psychopathic, that the
>> V-2 'starr'd' the English Countryside?
>>
>> We the readers, being the Children of the House, having coax'd corporeal
>> sweets from the kitchen
>> retire, evading a melancholy we may for a moment pretend to be blissfully
>> unaware of, to hear good Uncle P-err Cherrycoke
>> tell his stories, a sort of Sweet in themselves.
>>
>> *"Here have come to rest a long scarr'd sawbuck table, with two
>> mismatch'd side-benches, from the
>> Lancaster County branch of the family, -- some Second-Street Chippendale,
>> including an interpretation of
>> the Fam'd Chinese Sofa..."*
>>
>> Once while smoking a *J* I opened this book and had the realization that
>> the furniture listed here all have analogues in
>> characters throughout the book, I'm not sure how I came about this
>> thought but it's stuck with me.
>>
>> *'scarr'd sawbuck table'*, unlike the 'starr'd' impacts of Snow-Balls, *these
>> *carefree assaults leave a lasting mark.
>>
>> Will add more later,
>> now dinner.
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20120608/75dd1aff/attachment.html>