M&D - Chapter 11 pp 109-110

[Becky Lindroos]

Continuing Chapter 11 - in St. Helena - with Maskelyne, Mason & Dixon -

Page 109

Visitors to St. Helena, especially women and other than slaves - almost listed and compared to “Birds of Passage”:  
Convicts
Young Wives, 
Company Perpetuals  
(such shuttles upon the loom of Trade as Mrs. Rollright - ah - what an apparently appropriate name) 
Mrs. Rollright - aka Florinda - and she recognizes Mason - 


*** Okay  - someone has to ask it - what’s with the little ditties strung throughout - and throughout all of PYnchon’s work - is this a nod to Joyce that really touched the spirit of Pynchon and he couldn’t resist?  Parodies?  Parallax? 

I can’t copy anything from this source:  “Music in Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon”  - it’s 36 pages long including Notes.  I didn’t have to register or anything like that - just asked for .pdf and scrolled down. 
https://www.pynchon.net/owap/article/view/75/170

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"While other writers, like James Joyce, have invoked parallax as a perspectival method in order to challenge univocal narrative form, Pynchon works the concept more radically into his fictional treatment of historiography.[4] "

More at:  http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.903/14.1burns.html

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Page 110: 

**  Some omniscient narrator presents the backstory of Mason takes to attending public hangings following Rebekah’s death. 

"Wapping was also the site of 'Execution Dock', where pirates and other water-borne criminals faced execution by hanging from a gibbet constructed close to the low water mark. Their bodies would be left dangling until they had been submerged three times by the tide.[2]”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping

Lower-situated imitations of the "Hellfire Club”  
Hell-Fire Club -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Club  (of the times in England) 
also see: 
http://www.masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_11:_105-115#Page_110

Hangings on Tyburn - here we have the famous gallows - ended in 1783  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyburn#Tyburn_gallows

And what a beautiful line: 

** “To the Fabulators of  Grub Street, a licentious night-world of Rakes and Whores, surviving only in memories of pleasure, small darting winged beings, untrustworthy as remembrancers … “ 

(a nod to the untrustworthiness of memory)
Grub Street: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grub_Street

continuing:   “… yet its infected, fragrant, soiled encounters ‘neath the Moon were as worthy as any, -  an evil-in-innocence…”  


(Even though untrustworthy,  memories are valuable in some way - “evil-in-innocence”  because memories are like wolves in sheep’s clothing? - 

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And in a total discontinuance from the narrative although apparently in response to it: 
(“Uncle, Uncle!”… )  etc. 
This is Tenebræ and the Cherrycoke kids breaking in, isn’t it?  Probably because Cherrycoke is getting too close to subjects inappropriate for the ears of children?  -  “Rakes and Whores" and what not. 

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Becky 

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l