M&D - chapter 19-21 - The Calendar

[Jerome Park]

Right. Makes sense. Was just wondering if anyone had discovered, perhaps in
the RS Journal or elsewhere, any mention of  something like "Asiatick
Pygmies"? That Pynchon, you know, he may be alluding to some real project
of the RS.


 And, though Mason's dark tale seems to get the better of the locals who
badger him on the exhausting and exhausted  topic of time and lost days, he
is also evading the question because he doesn't, as his argument with his
father proves, know how to give a convincing answer to the questions
raised. Mason often resorts to tall-tales, hyperbole, absurdity,
histrionics, to shield himself from admitting his confusion, ignorance,
base emotional response to a problem he doesn't want to solve or even deal
with. He acts like an American!

His reaction to his fathers sensible apprenticeship of his grand children
is an example of how Mason, who doesn't want to deal with the problem, or
with his guilt, shields himself with exaggerated feelings; his boys are not
being sold to their Grand-Dad (203).



On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 10:21 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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