M&D - Chapter 19-21 - The Father

[Jerome Park]

Veblen and Weber, Marx, are on the books that Pynchon may have read and
been influenced by, What about Georg Simmel? _The Philosophy of Money_,
maybe?

Here, from that Online Encyclopedia we all love is a bit worth considering:

Simmel believed people created value by making objects, then separating
themselves from those objects and then trying to overcome that distance. He
found that objects that were too close were not considered valuable and
objects that were too far away for people to obtain were also not
considered valuable. What was also considered in determining value was the
scarcity, time, sacrifice, and difficulties involved in getting objects. In
the pre-modern era, beginning with bartering, different systems of exchange
for goods and services allowed for the existence of incomparable systems of
value (land, food, honor, love, etc.). With the advent of a universal
currency as an intermediary, these systems became reconcilable, as
everything tended to become expressible in a single quantifiable metric:
its monetary cost.

Simmel's outlook, while gloomy, is not wholly negative. As money and
transactions increase, the independence of an individual decreases as he or
she is drawn into a holistic network of exchange governed by quantifiable
monetary value. Paradoxically, this results in greater potential freedom of
choice for the individual, as money can be deployed toward any possible
goal, even if most people's sheer lack of money renders that potential
quite low much of the time. Money's homogenizing nature encourages greater
liberty and equality, even as it minimizes exceptional, incommensurable
achievements in art and love.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Money


On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 8:36 PM, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Why that turn in the common phrase? So Pynchon writes that Mason "invested
> Precious Sleep" and don't we expect that Mason *Lost* or *Wasted* or
> *Spent* Precious *Time* and not that he Invested Precious Sleep. Mason did
> not invest Time or Money. Time is money and money time. But Sleep is
> Precious and is invested when one loses it, wastes it, spends it by not
> sleeping. Hamlet would like this riddle. Had he, when a child who posed
> questions about the World wasted his father's time/money? What good the
> education the Father spent his time/money on if the Son can't explain the
> the theft of days to the boys in the Pub?
>
> The Theory of the Leisure Class
>
> AND
>
> What Money Wants.
>
> http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=21847
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 6:43 AM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>
> wrote:
>
>> There is a bit of role reversal at the bottom of page 191, betwixt Mason
>> and his father.
>> «He now began to quiz himself insomniac with this, wond’ring if his
>> father had struggled thus with Mason’s own earlier questions about the
>> World. He invested Precious Sleep in the Question, and saw not a Farthing’s
>> Dividend"»
>>
>>
>> > 30. mar. 2015 kl. 20.48 skrev Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>:
>> >
>> > This chapter is a real close up on Mason. From the shoe-buckle to
>> internal dialogue and memories of his father.
>> > On page 191 there are two hints that lead us to think Mason
>> (regularly?) took a beating from his father, right?
>> >
>> > But Leather and Bone? Should it not’ve said Leather and Flesh?
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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