M&D - Chapter 19-21 - The Father

Elisabeth Romberg eromberg at mac.com
Sat Apr 11 06:54:50 CDT 2015


Trust the huns to have armor like that.

> 9. apr. 2015 kl. 16.15 skrev Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
> 
> Right on, I say too, makes best sense.....but I decided to see what
> ELSE I could learn about 'leather and bone".
> 
> Two things (and NO, I do not think these are added resonances in this
> case, just interesting)
> 
> 1) The huns had an effective 'leather and bone' suit of armor, Google
> Books tells me
> 2) from BLOOD MERIDIAN: The mummied corpse hung from the crosstree
> with its mouth gaped in a raw hole, a thing of leather and bone
> scoured by the pumice ...
> 
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com> wrote:
>> Ah! Makes sense.
>> 
>> 9. apr. 2015 kl. 00.34 skrev Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>:
>> 
>> I could well be wrong, but I read "leather and bone" as 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
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

-
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