The Incidences of the phrase "Iceland Spar" in AtD - II

[Mark Kohut]

Great find.....and another thing at first pass, pearls are like
silver and gold.....stand for money.,........"what deliverance from
the limitless mischief of pearls"..for example...
an AtD equiv of
Gold-- from the East (as in Golden Fang)? 
 
 

From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, March 4, 2012 4:24 PM
Subject: The Incidences of the phrase "Iceland Spar" in AtD - II

p 114 - the first mention in the text, of a Dr Mikimoto developing
cultured pearls, has a basis in fact.
And he founded the company in 1893.

http://www.mikimotoamerica.com/our-heritage/our-founder/

I didn't catch that the first time around!

of course, the Chums encounter the pearl via Lindsay, who unwittingly
bites into an oyster containing one, which Miles has bought in East
Java from "a gentleman of Japanese origin and unusual persuasiveness"
(113)

-- in my humble literary interpretation, Lindsay's reaction of "an
agonized scream...followed by half a minute of uncharacteristic
profanity" recaps a naive but earnest reader's reaction when first
happening upon embedded meaning in a text (darnit, I just want to read
a ripping yarn, what's all this *symbolism* doing in here!)

the pearl is embedded in the oyster on purpose!  and the batch of
oysters sold to Miles *on purpose* in order to disseminate the
marching orders which themselves have been embedded in the pearl *by
design*

there are at least a term paper's worth of twists and turns right here
on 113-114

--eg - ok, the process is developed by Dr Mikimoto and no doubt
co-opted and refined by the Japanese military who no doubt make
Mikimoto an offer he can't refuse*, but hmmm how comes it that the
Chums Hierarchy are able to use this secret method?  A-and the
ruminations are hilarious ("What deliverance from the limitless
mischief of pearls" makes me laugh every time, like my old favorite
from childhood, "flying buttress" or "basement toilet flushes up")  --

a-and... but I'm just doing a first pass!


* so that the Pearls at the 1910 Anglo-Japanese Fair in London, the
1926 World's Fair in Philadelphia, and the 1939 World's Fair in New
York (including a pearl model of the Liberty Bell, which "drew gasps"
from visitors) contained propagandistic and who-knows-what subliminal
messages -- no doubt the fiendish pearl-meisters were able to dictate
the lighting and backdrops to accommodate their fiendish purposes...
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