M&D readins c1p1

[Lemuel Underwing]

Sorry, I tapped out there for a bit... wander'd off to the 'Malay District'
acquired certain *Herbaceous Flowers* and was lost in abstraction these
three days, wandering woods reciting Yeats to myself sort of thing, on to
some Spiritual Metaphor never quite remembered... terribly ineffective way
to stave off Melancholy, which I am ever afflicted with. But I shall pick
up where I left off, and do my best to keep myself on task...


“This Christmastide of 1786, with the War settl’d and the Nation bickering
itself into Fragments, wounds bodily and ghostly, great and small go aching
on, not ev’ry one commemorated,- nor, too often, even recounted.”

One of the problems we have, historically speaking, when it comes to
recounting the events of the American Revolution, are the various fabulist,
contradictory, or downright counterfeit stories concerning it. No small
wonder that much has passed into Legend. (There is also an analogue in
Pynchon’s own lifetime, the stories of the Veterans of World Wars I&II
keeping silent in much the same way.)


The following paragraph describes the work-stations of the city and
hillsides all frozen over, the workers retired homeward, inspiring just the
sort of fireside Idleness that would be conducive to listening to long
Tales from the 'far-traveled' Uncle.

LeSpark, who we later find out is an Arms Merchant, has allowed Cherrycoke
to stay on the condition that he keep the children entertained. Upon my
first reading, in something of a marijuana daze, I recall thinking this was
some sort of Political Allegory. The Poets and Writers are allow'd to keep
telling their stories which, more often than not, cast ol Papa Government
in a rather bad light, as long as they keep the young minds that are so
infected with them at bay. "*too much evidence of Juvenile Rampage at the
wrong moment, however, and Boppo! 'Twill be Out the Door with him, where
waits the Winter's Block and Blade."


*I'm gonna go have a lie-down for now, folks.*
*

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Madeleine Maudlin <
madeleinemaudlin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Okay, if I'm following you right, your reading is somewhere on page 2.
>  That was Friday.  Have you had a chance to...read any more?  I'm on 200,
> and at first, when I first noticed your posts earlier today, I was
> delighted, you'll be caught up in no-time and I'll enjoy joining in.  But
> now I'm scribbling some calculations here and, it's not looking good, for
> me....one and one half pages per three days, that's being the awesomely
> optimistic Dasein I am, that you'll post another one and a half tonight, or
> today sometime, who knows how to calculate mathematics on this here I can
> barely count, there's the physicist fellow who knows Nietzsche, do you also
> do math?  What's--how long til page, hang on lemme be exact, 207, exclaims
> my bookmark!  Fuck her!  Either the very end of chapter 20 or start of
> chapter 21.
>
> If I recall, Mason just confronted his father, Sr., about confiscating
> Jr.'s kids, to not so positive achievement.
>
> But I can come back to the middle of page 2, that's cool.  Not like I
> remember any of it.  Something tells me that soon MandD will be in a local.
>  One more grand wead before the booze kills you, it's all good...
>
> 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.
>
>
>
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