God, Jefferson, and other Big Cheeses

[David Ewers]

Something I stumbled across...

http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/people/john-leland.html

An ardent supporter of Thomas Jefferson, Leland became famous for his media-savvy strategy to signal the Baptists' support of the newly elected president in 1801: the gift of a giant wheel of cheese. Reportedly made from the milk of 900 Republican cows, the cheese measured 4 feet in diameter, 13 feet in circumference, and weighed 1,235 pounds. Emblazoned on its red crust was Jefferson's favorite motto: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." As the giant cheese made the monthlong journey from western Massachusetts to Washington, D. C., pundits lampooned, ridiculed and celebrated the "mammoth cheese." On Jan. 1, 1802, Jefferson welcomed Leland and his flamboyant gift into White House. Two days later, Leland delivered the Sunday sermon in the House of Representatives, with the president in attendance.

Leland's belief in full separation of church and state would lead him to denounce the notion of the United States as a Christian nation. In A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia, Leland wrote: "The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. ... Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians."



On Apr 11, 2015, at 12:20 PM Jolly good day we are having, Elisabeth Romberg wrote:

> 
> And lets not forget the earlier interest Mason had in the Pygmies back on p. 67.
> 
> «Mason makes quick Head-Turns, to the Left and Right, and lowers his Voice. «Whilst you’ve been out rollicking with your Malays and Pygmies,…what have you heard of the various sorts of Magick, that they are said to possess?"
> 
> He could be riffing on that. 
> 
> I mean he’s obviously turned it over in his imagination before.
> 
> 
> 
>> 11. apr. 2015 kl. 20.38 skrev Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>:
>> 
>> 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....
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20150414/4e9606cc/attachment.html>