GR translation: and faces of great administrators engraved and run off to signify

[Mike Jing]

Oh, I get it.  It makes more sense if it refers to the printing of paper
money.

Thanks, everyone.


On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 7:01 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> Chambers’ Universal Learners Dictionary : Run off 1 vt sep, to print: *I
> want 500 copies run off at once*****
>
> ** **
>
> From a technology PoV, the addicts’ Need has remarkable function as well
> as physical properties. Typically, you wouldn’t use the same metal for
> coins (which are stamped or “struck” in dies of harder metal) and for
> engraving plates (from which paper currency is run off. And it’s not just
> any coins, but *sovereigns*. The drug feeds Wimpe’s supply chain, and in
> the Opium Wars was a prop of British empire (ruler=sovereign) as well as
> commerce.****
>
> ** **
>
> US version, an old conceit of mine: we here are taught as schoolchildren
> that the Massachusetts colonists (Plymouth Brethren, “pilgrims”)  were
> taught how to grow local crops by friendly Native Americans, and gathered
> with them for the first Thanksgiving meal. For most of the first 200 years,
> though, the tobacco-growing colonies farther south were more populous and
> prosperous, arguably more “representative” of British America than New
> England was. So my proposed Real Thanksgiving Archetype shows a Virginia
> Tidewater planter and his family, and their prayer is:****
>
> ** **
>
> “Dear Lord, thank you for an addictive crop and slaves to grow it.”****
>
> ** **
>
> Sadly, I could never get my children’s public schools to revise their
> holiday pageant accordingly. ****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Mike Jing
> *Sent:* Friday, June 21, 2013 12:45 AM
> *To:* Pynchon Mailing List
> *Subject:* GR translation: and faces of great administrators engraved and
> run off to signify****
>
> ** **
>
> P351.30-352.6   Chu Piang being a monument to all this, nowadays whole
> tourist caravans come through to look at him, usually while he’s Under The
> Influence . . . “Here ladies and gentlemen, as you may have observed, the
> characteristic sooty-gray complexion. . . .” They all stand peering into
> his dreamstruck facies, attentive men with mutton-chop sideburns, holding
> pearl-gray morning hats in their hands, the women lifting their skirts away
> from where horrid Asian critters are seething microscopically across the
> old floorboards, while their tour leader indicates items of interest with
> his metal pointer, an instrument remarkably thin, thinner than a rapier in
> fact, often flashing along much faster than eyes can really follow—“His
> Need, you will notice, retains its shape under all manner of stresses. No
> bodily illness, no scarcity of supply seems to affect it a whit . . .” all
> their mild, their shallow eyes following gently as piano chords from a
> suburban parlor . . . the inelastic Need turns luminous this stagnant air:
> it is an ingot beyond price, from which sovereigns yet may be struck, and
> faces of great administrators engraved and run off to signify.****
>
> What is the meaning of "run off" here?****
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130621/0b929d22/attachment.html>