M&D - Chap 10 - pgs 96-97

Mon Feb 16 21:10:09 CST 2015

Oh my!  And we’ve been skirting all around some of those issues - (That “screen-play” reference is describing somehting quite different from what I was doing. ) 

And I was starting to look at tense (mostly present but changeable) and the idea of diegetic and  intradiegetic and metadiegetic but thinking of it as Russian nesting dolls, since I didn’t have the word - (Mark used it though and I hadn’t had a chance to explore.)    

I don’t think I can read the whole thing - it’s 299 pages with an additional vii pages.  (I’ll bet his advisors told him to keep it under 300.) 

Bek

> On Feb 16, 2015, at 10:48 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It is only now that I did look up the external link provided near the bottom of the wikipedia page to M&D: An academic dissertation on structure and sentiment in Mason & Dixon.
> 
> That text is not only free, it's great. And not only because it has something to say about the narrators of M&D that seems to come near the points I was making in that regard. Especially the pages 63ff. Whoever is interested in getting to the heart of that matter should read these 10 or so pages dedicated to it. Keeping in mind : "a truism of all reading, is particularly useful when reading any of Pynchon’s works: trust the narration without reflecting on it excessively; become immersed in it and stay immersed; trust your instincts, because if something, however bizarre, seems to be happening, it probably is."
> 
> 
> 2015-02-16 19:31 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
> yes, your perspective convinced me---along with that camera, Becky's
> camera, back when
> this first came up. IMHO.
> 
> Someone else vote or argue?
> 
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
> > The reason I'm saying this now (and I'm open to change) is that I sense Pynchon is presenting Cherrycoke as a story-teller and the story he is telling is the (hi)story of Mason & Dixon.  When we tell stories we say stuff like "Once upon a time..."  (or "A Jesuit, a Corsican and a Chinaman walked into a barroom,")  and go on as though we were omniscient narrators.  That's what I think Cherrycoke is doing and how Pynchon is using him to show us that oral/written history is unreliable - he's turning it on its pointy head and using anachronisms etc. -  (flat out errors?)
> >
> > This comes up more directly later when in Chapter 11 someone asks Cherrycoke how he can know what happened on St. Helena considering he wasn't there.  (He doesn't give any kind of good answer.)
> >
> > Pynchon is showing us that history is unreliable because of the narrators.   This isn't "event" history - this is oral/written history -
> >
> > Becky
> >
> >> On Feb 16, 2015, at 7:32 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >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
> >>
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> 

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