M&D - Chapter 19-21 - The Father

Wed Apr 8 17:34:42 CDT 2015

I could well be wrong, but I read "leather and bone" as shin-kicking
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin-kicking> -- no more or less peculiar a
folkway than cheese-rolling, I guess.

On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 4:55 PM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com> wrote:

> Another great post, thanks!
>
> Could you please explain to me the meaning of this:  "in the paradoxical
> operations outlined by Georg Simmel, *liberates Mason from his Father's
> Bread, though not from his Father's leather to the bone*»?
>
>  I sort of read «leather and bone» as, ...well, the fact that their shins
> began to prickle «with unmediated memories of violent collisions between
> Leather and Bone», as the tension between them heightened, as a reference
> to Mason receiving a beating, like with a belt? There is also a reference
> earlier on the page that «baffled Truculence in his Phiz that made Mason as
> eager to comfort the distress it too clearly signal’d, as to avoid the
> shouting it too often promis’d.»
>
> But, as I said before, why not say Leather to the Skin, or Flesh? Is
> Leather and Bone an english expression that goes over my head?
>
>
>
> 4. apr. 2015 kl. 15.25 skrev Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>:
>
> Why cast Mason's dreams in the language of money? His Investment in
> Precious Sleep yielded not a "Farthing's Dividend"The syntax is rather odd
> and puzzling. But putting that aside for the moment, the idea that an
> investment in Sleep had the potential to produce a dividend implies that
> Mason's Precious Sleep does not belong to him, but to some company that
> pays dividends, to a contract. So in working for whomever or whatever he
> works for, Mason has invested not only his time, but his sleep and his
> dreams. That money, in the paradoxical operations outlined by Georg
> Simmel, liberates Mason from his Father's Bread, though not from his
> Father's leather to the bone, here now figuratively applied to his figuring
> and calculating the lost days,"it minimizes exceptional, incommensurable
> achievements in art and love." The global currency (Scientific Time and
> Financial Derivatives), as the Landlord suggests (192), is based on
> a purported direct, immediate apprehension or vision of truth (The Book of
> Revelations"), one that resists critical reflection because it is the
> special gift of a spiritual and cognitive elite. These gods of Science and
> Finance conspire with the "Walpole-Gang[s]" to rob the People of their
> Time.
>
> Mason takes the melancholic humorist's position, Swiftian in its
> misanthropic analysis of Language, Love, and Death in the Western World.
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 8:59 AM, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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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