M&D - chapter 19-21 - The Calendar

[Jerome Park]

Mason's Pygmies have literary precedence (Gulliver's Travels and so on) but
may also have some historical basis as well:

 Dionysius Exiguus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus


On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 1:26 PM, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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