M&D - Chapter 11 - pp 107-108

[Mark Kohut]

I would say The Other World is likely Hades-associated, or general
Dark Unknown, or Unconscious (per future as modernity reading layer).

It  is not where the townspeople ever want to go.

On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is the Other World a Hades reference? With Bekah as Mason's Eurydice?
>
> No need to apologise, you're doing a grand job.
>
>
> On Saturday, February 21, 2015, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
>>
>> Following my own unique 2 pages a day we're up to Chapter 11, pages
>> 107-108 -  sorry if it's over-kill - my editing skills are close to nil.
>> ****
>>
>> Page 107:
>> ** Maskelyne is on St. Helena to observe Sirius in the constellation of
>> Canis Major (the Great Dog).   Mason & Dixon were going to Bencoolen for the
>> "inconstant" star of Mira in the constellation of (Cetus) the Whale.   The
>> star Gamma is in the constellation Draco (Dragon)  at Greenwich for
>> Englishmen.
>>
>> "Ev'ry Midnight the baleful thing is there, crossing directly overhead, -
>> the Yellow Dog.  There inverted among the Wires, all but flowing."   Yeah?
>>
>> "Wires, all but flowing" ???  Sounds a bit paranoid to me.  What are these
>> wires -  the ship's wires?  imaginary lines between points in a
>> constellation? the lines used by astronomers?
>>
>>
>> *** "A very small town clings to the edge of an interior that must be
>> reckoned part of the 'Other World.'"  (? Other World?  Aliens?  Celestial?
>> Etc?)
>>
>> "No change here is gradual..."
>> A Pynchon motif....rapid change is not good, not natural. And, next line,
>> distances should not be vast....life 'goes for nought"   (more later in
>> book)
>>
>> "... the sea appears to lie <i> above the Island, <i - in book> -  as if
>> suspended, and kept from falling fatally upon it, thro' the operations of
>> Mysterion impenetrable on the part of a Guardian . . . . As if in Payments
>> credited against the Deluge, upon no sure Basis of Prediction, the great
>> Sea-Rollers will rise, and come against the Island, - reaching higher than
>> the Town with the Jacobite name, tho' perhaps not quite to the ridgeline
>> above it."
>>
>> This is getting somewhat spooky -
>>
>>
>> *****************************
>> Page  108 -
>>
>> "a Company of Giant rob'd Beings, risen incalculably far away over the
>> horizon"
>> These robed figures at the edge of the world can be found in Gravity's
>> Rainbow, on page 217, after Slothrop gets Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck drunk:
>> But out at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the world, who are
>> these visitors standing...these robed figures
>> http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_11:_105-115
>>
>> *****
>> "Out upon Munden's Point stand a pair of Gallows, simplified to
>> Pen-strokes in the glare of this Ocean sky.  A Visitor may lounge in the
>> Evening upon the Platform behind the Lines, and, as a Visitor to London
>> might gaze at St . Paul's, regard these more sinister forms in the failing
>> North Light,-- perhaps led to mediate upon Punishment,- or upon Commerce ...for
>> Commerce without Slavery is unthinkable,  whilst Slavery must ever include,
>> as an essential Term, the gallows, - Slavery without the Gallows being as
>> hollow and Waste a Proceeding, as a Crusade without the Cross."    ****
>> (SEE next post for a wee bit of parsing or careful reading  which is what
>> that paragraph needs more than annotating!)
>>
>> Fwiw,  I can find no verification of any gallows at St. Helena.  This is a
>> good site about slavery there,  but no mention of gallows although gallows
>> are very common in history and there were hangings in St. Helena.
>> http://sainthelenaisland.info/slaves.htm
>>
>> Actually, the slaves in St. Helena were treated relatively well according
>> to that site. However -
>> "In 1679 rumours of an impending uprising by slaves led to the gruesome
>> execution of three slaves and cruel punishment of many others - ghost
>> stories still told on the island relate to these executions."
>>
>> Can't find further evidence of that incident,  but there are hangings
>> mentioned in a book (1905)  by E.L. Jackson online at
>>
>> http://www.archive.org/stream/sthelenahistoric00jackrich/sthelenahistoric00jackrich_djvu.txt
>>
>> Munden Point is a place of interest on St. Helena -  an old British fort
>> was there - photo:
>> https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidstanleytravel/16511162565/
>>
>> ***********
>> Slavery at St. Helena:
>> "A census in 1723 recorded 1,110 people, including 610 slaves."
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena
>>
>> *****
>> Visitors, especially women,  to St. Helena 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 -
>>
>> Another narrator back-up to Mason and Florida at the hangings he attended
>> 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)
>>
>> Hangings on Tyburn - here we have the gallows - ended 1783
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyburn#Tyburn_gallows
>>
>> **
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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