M&D - Chapter 19-21 - The Father

[Jerome Park]

Makes sense to me. The memory characterizes Mason as a man whose
insecurities and doubts, are products, in part, of his relationship with
his father. Pynchon exploits this conflict, between an intellectual son and
an overbearing father who can't quite grasp the work his son is doing, and
who resorts to politicizing the disagreement and undermining the son's
knowledge of the world, again and again. The boy genius with
flaws confronts his father and takes it on the shins.

On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 6:34 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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