M&D - chapter 19-21 - The Calendar

[Monte Davis]

ER> «A Gleam more malicious than merry creeps into his eyes.» I think he is
«punishing» his audience for cornering him about his working with Bradley
at Greenwich

Agreed. Mason's Eleven Days story is larded with many of the novel's (and
Pynchon's) grandest thematic concerns -- but I think Mason himself, at that
moment, is thinking: "You bumpkins (and half the country) insist the
calendar adjustment was some dark and devious plot? All right then, I'll
give you dark and devioius!"

On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 7:52 AM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com> wrote:

> Cheers!
>
> Oh definitely! He’d had a few pints (glasses of wine), warmed himself up
> with the tale about Bradley, and, as you said, he’s in the pub! What do you
> do? He had everybody’s attention, so he just went off on one with the
> Pygmies.
>
> (also note p. 192: «A Gleam more malicious than merry creeps into his
> eyes.» I think he is «punishing» his audience for cornering him about his
> working with Bradley at Greenwich).
>
> Page 196 is a great surprise in a way cos Dixon’s been sort of «the funny
> one» up until now, Mason caught up in grief and what not (sirius business),
> but he really comes through on this page, on a roll, hilarious. It makes
> him so likable as a character and rounds him right off.
>
>
>
>
> 9. apr. 2015 kl. 21.36 skrev Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>:
>
> Mason is uncomfortable, exhausted, weary. Why? He's a science man, but
> he's still troubled by the questions of metaphysics, religion and politics.
> He is haunted to answer  questions that science, as it breaks from
> philosophy and religion, tables in the interest of progress and the
> pragmatic needs of markets.
>
> But the missing days. Where did they go? Did they ever exist? Did naming
> them, or numbering them, give them existence? Did deleting them from the
> calendar synchronize the machinery of Englishmen with Catholics, Frenchmen
> and even Jesuits? Why has science brokered this deal in time? A single
> currency will surely, as more recent events in Europe have proven, deny
> citizens fundamental rights, to property and the wealth of nations.  So the
> men in The George (a Pub), like the men who live under his Monarchy in
> America, may not be as dumb as they sound, as blinded by conspiracy as they
> seem to be, not quite the idiots Mason calls them, anymore than he is the
> idiot his father calls him. It is, after all, metaphysics, no simple topic,
> so questions of Being, Knowing, and, Meaning, Being and Time, Language and
> Knowing...etc...
>
> Did Mason make up the Pygmies?
>
> On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 3:10 PM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Would you mind expanding on that, please? (I am just getting back into
>> the group read).
>>
>>
>>
>> 2. apr. 2015 kl. 18.44 skrev Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>:
>>
>> I
>>
>> Metaphysicians  attempt to clarify the fundamental notions by which
>> people understand the world.
>>
>> In Chapter 19 Mason is a metaphysician.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 5:40 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Those lost eleven days have always bemused me in my readings. I want to
>>> find something metaphysical since Time matters in all his work....yet,
>>> haven't.
>>>
>>> I keep thinking very simplistically, very prosaically, probably stupidly
>>> about that feeling of " where does the time go" we've all had......or the
>>> song about....
>>> As I said, not quite right....
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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