M&D - Chap 10 - pgs 96-97

[jochen stremmel]

>And now back to Mason and Dixon at the Cape - where Cherrycoke is back to
being our ** unreliable yet omniscient narrator**  again - (sounds like an
oxymoron but it certainly works) -<

As I said before, I don't think they are one and the same: There is the
omniscient narrator who tells us about Cherrycoke who is the narrator with
his limited point of view, who says "I" sometimes, as reliable as you and
me, who is kicked out of the house if he don't behave.

2015-02-16 16:16 GMT+01:00 Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>:

> Moving along -
>
> ***  p. 96 -  "A Vector of Desire" -   Lacan -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_of_desire
>
> http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.903/14.1burns.html  (I’m sure this has
> been posted prior -  it's
> "Postmodern Historiography: Politics and the Parallactic Method in Thomas
> Pynchon's Mason & Dixon" by Christy L. Burns )
>
> “Celestial Trigonometry”?
> Are we mapping the skies?  Putting the solar system on a grid? Is that why
> Pynchon “started at the beginning?”
>
> *
> “Somebody somewhere in the world, watching the Planet go dark against the
> Sun … (quotes) from Sappho’s Fragment 95…”:
> “Oh Hesperus, - you bring back all that the dark night scatter’d, - you
> bring in the sheep, and the goat, - you bring the Child back to her mother.”
> (Pynchon uses the H. T. Wharton translation):
> http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/sappho/sape08u.htm
>
> So what’s Pynchon’s reasoning in having “someone” misread/misinterpret the
> Hesperus,  the *evening Venus*  as the Transit Venus of the morning?
> Showing the idea of misreading?  Misinterpreting?
>
> Just prior to that quote there is the line that says this misread
> interruption is  “…seeming to wreck the *Ob,*” - the “Ob"? -   Observation,
> of course, but which one?  1.  It could be the observation of the Transit
> itself (perhaps as displayed in the orrery)  or 2.  it could be
> Cherrycoke’s observation about it with “Vector of Desire” and all being so
> appropriate.  - The question is - are our #1 type  observations also
> misinterpretations?  What does that do to history and/or events?
>
> **
> “A sort of long black Filament yet connects her to the Limb of the Sun,
> tho’ she be moved will onto its Face…”  “This, or odd behavior like it, is
> going on all over the World all day long that fifth and sixth of June…”
>
> “… as if the Creation’s Dark Engineer had purposedly arrang’d the
> Intervals thus, to provoke a certain Instruction, upon the limits to human
> grandeur by Mortality.”
>
> Satan?  Death?  This is the first of the pair of Transits - 1761 and 1769
> - then not again until 1874 and 1882 followed by 2004 and 2012 and then not
> again until 2117 / 2125.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus#History_of_observation
>
> **
> And now back to Mason and Dixon at the Cape - where Cherrycoke is back to
> being our ** unreliable yet omniscient narrator**  again - (sounds like an
> oxymoron but it certainly works) -
>
> **
> Extra credit resource:
>
> Mason and Dixon at the Cape - 4 pages -
> Title: Mason and Dixon at the Cape
> Authors: MacKenzie, T.
> Journal: Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of South Africa, Vol.
> 10, p. 99
>
> http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1951MNSSA..10...99M/0000099.000.html
> The  clocks and observatory are mentioned on page 100 but also see page 99
> - they’re all kind of interesting.
>
> **************
>
> p. 97 -
>
> The Zeeman and Vroom households “speed about” getting ready for the
> Transit - the morning is foggy.  This is likely the case as per the
> “Journal’s Monthly Notes”  noted above - p. 99. (So no metaphor is
> necessarily intended, but the possibility should not be excluded.)
>
> “Dutch Ado about nothing.”   -  groan - lol -   The slaves seem somewhat
> amused by the behavior of “their owners.”
>
> ****************
>
> Please add, subtract, argue, define, categorize, compare, contrast,
> delineate, deconstruct, verify,  obfuscate, clarify, etc. as you will -
>
> Becky -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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