M&D - Chapter 10, (a few annotations)
Becky Lindroos
bekker2 at icloud.com
Mon Feb 16 14:00:51 CST 2015
Good question and I think it’s another step back. To my notion the sermon’s placement would have been the work of an omniscient, but possibly reliable, model editor. Or even, perhaps, it was doing of the author (gasp).
Becky
> On Feb 16, 2015, at 10:51 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here's one question we all might weigh in on re the narrator (of what)
> perspectives.
> Who put the Cherrycoke Unpublished Sermons bit on the page--as fiction?
>
> I say it is the omniscient narrator, sorta giving us an additional
> perspective on Cherrycoke.
>
> Although Cherrycoke would of course know it, I read M & D that he
> would tell us and quote
> it in the narrative were he revealing it. He is telling the official,
> published story, as it were.
>
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I suggest one reason is that it was because of the overwhelming
>> religion of it...as Cherrycoke came to doubt
>> as we learned...
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
>>> I have no idea as to why the sermon was "unpublished," but it likely wouldn't have been because of the science/religion metaphor.
>>>
>>> For Rev. Cherrycoke to see God's hand in the organization of the cosmos and draw a sermon from it wouldn't have been unusual or controversial. It still isn't really. I suppose he was Methodist or something like it - same as Mason? The deists and later clock-work folks were even more interested in Natural Philosophy. . (The only problem between science and religion I see is with evolution and maybe global warming.)
>>>
>>> Great 17th century map of the Celestial: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy#mediaviewer/File:Planisphæri_coeleste.jpg
>>>
>>> Becky
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Feb 16, 2015, at 3:34 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Why is Cherrycoke's sermon unpublished?
>>>>
>>>> Why is that wonderful set of metaphors
>>>> of the great chain of being (maybe), the harmony of the universe with
>>>> the West's
>>>> major religious beliefs.....in which as Becky notes Gravity is
>>>> mentioned....God's
>>>> Gravity....a world in which all the Planet's know where the Sun that
>>>> is God is....
>>>>
>>>> I suggest because he had his doubts even before he defrocked himself.
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>
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