M&D - Chapter 10, (a few annotations)

[Mark Kohut]

The German Engineer, the one who travers'd the sea came to set up a
new Planet in Philadelphis...

Also an allusion to the brave new land that will be HQered in Phildalphia?

See what is said after "By the time he got to Philadelphia.....
a World with a history even longer than our own, etc.....'lands that had
to be fought over, other Species to be conquered".....

'Revealed to him one orrery at a time"...the harmonious cosmic ideas get
modified by.......reality".........

Sounds a little like coming to America, yes?

On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
> Continuing in the chapter -  (chapters are approximate because I'm reading on a Kindle app)
>
> Following the sermon the text gives us Cherrycoke reporting on the activities of the family as they retell and play out the story of the 1761 Transit of Venus.
>
> p. 94:
> "Orrery"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery
>
> Jules Verne's:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgyXY3vPd4
>
> At Christies's for only $37,098 an 18th century orrery/tellurian:
> http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/a-boxed-american-orrery-and-tellurian-set-5480154-details.aspx
>
> "Tenebrae" - in Latin means shadow or darkness) - reminds Ethelmer of his darkness in the innocent light of her youth.  (Not sure what the illuminated nostril suggests.)
>
> ** Are these two kissing cousins?  Or was there some kind of abuse involved at some past point?
>
> ********
>  p. 95 -
> "...having travers'd the Sea"
> Traverse is the family name in ATD and Vineland. Metaphor, fer sure. For more, see ch. 3, p. 14
>
>  "Nessel" - is fictional but the discovery of a new planet is real - Uranus - 1781.
> "Georgian"  -   Herschel first reported the discovery of Uranus ("Georgian")  on April 26, 1781, initially believing it a comet.[12]
>
> **  and from Otto's page at http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/md/md10.htm
> "This reminds me of another "new planet" in another novel by Pynchon, "(...) The new planet Pluto (...)." (GR 415)
>
> Nessel (fictional?) provided Uranus for the Orreries to make sure they were updated.  And for extra realism he pasted map pieces on it - Mappemondes - (a two -hemisphere map),  but that won't really work because flat maps don't conform to their three-dimensional realities.
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mappemonde#mediaviewer/File:Delisle_-_Mappe-Monde.png
>
>
> Solar Parallax:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax
>
> Any parallax is a triangle - which by definition has 3 sides - a Jesuit, a Corsican and a Chinaman - fwiw and whatever that's about - etc.
>
> Bek-
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l