M&D - Chapter 11 pp 109-110

[David Ewers]

Maybe we're dealing with an Amalgamated Mythic Situation here, or my Persephones are giving birth to your Eurydice.  Either way, I agree with you about Hades.  

On Feb 23, 2015, at 12:41 PM Jolly good day we are having, Monte Davis wrote:

> DE> maybe Mason's dark obsessions, and journeys, "by Ferry",  are him (as Demeter...), following Rebekah into the land of the dead 
> 
> Orpheus going after Eurydice would require fewer sex changes, and P has done a lot with Orpheus before and since M&D. In general, my impression is that his underworld/afterlifes (possibly including the eleven days in this book? the Thanatoids? The revenant Reg Despard in BE? the interior of the earth here and in AtD?) lean more to a Greek Hades -- gray, joyless --  than to a Christian heaven or hell.
> 
> And we're still left with the bottom of p. 110 -- if Wicks is narrating, *after* he has been awakened and/or brought back to awareness that the boys are listening: "'Twas then Mason began his Practice, each Friday, of going out to the hangings at Tyburn, expressly to chat up women," and his first flirtatious encounter with Florinda, complete with discussion of how the hanged are hung.
> 
> The dichotomy of roistering good-time lad Dixon and mournful Rebekah-fixated Mason is so consistent throughout the book that this bit really stands out -- I think, is *meant* to stand out -- on subsequent readings. I can't make sense of it as gratuitous embroidery on Wicks' part, or as a tag-end of some alternate Masonic lifeline like the Sumatran fantasies.
> 
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 2:38 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
> While reading the passage about those "Birds of passage thro' St. Helena," particularly the "Almost to a woman, they confess to strange and inexpressible Feelings when the 
> ship makes landfall,-- the desolate line of peaks, the oceanic sunlight..." part, I got the image of so many Persephones in transit between the land of the living and the Underworld.  Under Eleusinian Mysteries, wikipedia describes the myth of Persephone and Demeter as:
>  "a cycle with three phases, the "descent" (loss), the "search" and the "ascent", with the main theme the "ascent" of Persephone and the reunion with her mother.
> A sort of Gravity's Rainbow, right?  So maybe Mason's dark obsessions, and journeys, "by Ferry",  are him (as Demeter...), following Rebekah into the land of the dead (what's that do to a lens, I wonder...)?
> 
> And the song?  I'm not sure who's narrating (I've got a sense there's a parallax-type thing going on between us and Pynchon and Cherrycoke, who reminds me a bit of the Cretan who tells us all Cretans are liars), but it's fun to imagine it with some oboe.
> 
> 
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> On Feb 23, 2015, at 10:17 AM have a nice day, violet wrote this message:), <kelber at mindspring.com> <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
>> Yes, two narrators, omniscient and Cherrycoke, the first of whom plays with time and space; the second of whom alters facts to suit his audience, plays at biographer, and lapses into fantasies of other people's fantasies, thoughts and experiences.
>> 
>> Laura
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>> -----Original Message-----
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>> From: jochen stremmel 
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>> Sent: Feb 23, 2015 12:33 PM
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>> To: Becky Lindroos 
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>> Cc: kelber , pynchon -l 
>> 
>> Subject: Re: M&D - Chapter 11 pp 109-110
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> I just have to figure there are "nested narrators”  in this book<
>> 
>> Sorry if I am repeating myself but until now, p. 111, it seems to me that there are only two narrators, one Primary Narrator (to take Upton's term), that of the first sentence for example and of the bigger part of paragraph 4 in chapter 3, to give another one, and Cherrycoke – and I wouldn't call him unreliable, not if the word should be more than a truism, because everybody – even TRP (who is no narrator but a storyteller, too (albeit a storyteller who gives us kind of a tapestry of realities)) – has his limits and we, the readers, have to decide if we should trust them or not. 
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>> 2015-02-23 15:38 GMT+01:00 Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>:
>> On Feb 22, 2015, at 9:43 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
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>>> 
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>>> I read the "Uncle, Uncle!" interjection as a sign that Cherrycoke had lapsed into silent revery (or fantasy) about topics inappropriate for his audience.
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>>> 
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>>> There's a passage on p. 111 (sorry to get ahead!): "Mason gapes in despair. He'll be days late thinking up any reply to speech as sophisticated as this. 'In my experience,' he might say …" But then Mason's whole conversation with Florinda is recounted. Is the conversation still conditional: these are the things that Mason might say? Or is this Cherrycoke's version, aloud, or in revery?
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>>> Laura
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>>> 
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>> Could be!   I just have to figure there are "nested narrators”  in this book and some of them are more apparent than others. I think I’ll call Cherrycoke the “story-teller” who becomes an "omniscient narrator”  while he’s telling much of the inner story.  But he and his audience are “transported” to his fantasy-land so it all becomes a notch more “real,” especially in the case of Mason.
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>> Mason has a huge memory section in a few chapters - when he meets Rebekah and the cheese rolling (one of my really favorite parts of the whole book - memorable).
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>>> 
>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>> 
>>>> From: Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>
>> 
>>>> Sent: Feb 22, 2015 11:39 AM
>> 
>>>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> 
>>>> Subject: M&D - Chapter 11 pp 109-110
>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>>>> Continuing Chapter 11 - in St. Helena - with Maskelyne, Mason & Dixon -
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>>>> 
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>>>> Page 109
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>>>> 
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>>>> Visitors to St. Helena, especially women and other than slaves - almost listed and compared to “Birds of Passage”:
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>>>> Convicts
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>>>> Young Wives,
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>>>> Company Perpetuals
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>>>> (such shuttles upon the loom of Trade as Mrs. Rollright - ah - what an apparently appropriate name)
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>>>> Mrs. Rollright - aka Florinda - and she recognizes Mason -
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>>>> *** 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?
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>>>> 
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>>>> 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.
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>>>> https://www.pynchon.net/owap/article/view/75/170
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>>>> 
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>>>> ***********
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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] "
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>>>> 
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>>>> More at:  http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.903/14.1burns.html
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>>>> 
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>>>> ****
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>>>> Page 110:
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>>>> **  Some omniscient narrator presents the backstory of Mason takes to attending public hangings following Rebekah’s death.
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>>>> "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
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>>>> 
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>>>> Lower-situated imitations of the "Hellfire Club”
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>>>> Hell-Fire Club -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Club  (of the times in England)
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>>>> also see:
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>>>> http://www.masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_11:_105-115#Page_110
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>>>> 
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>>>> Hangings on Tyburn - here we have the famous gallows - ended in 1783
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>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyburn#Tyburn_gallows
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>>>> 
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>>>> And what a beautiful line:
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>>>> ** “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 … “
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>>>> (a nod to the untrustworthiness of memory)
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>>>> Grub Street:
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>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grub_Street
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>>>> continuing:   “… yet its infected, fragrant, soiled encounters ‘neath the Moon were as worthy as any, -  an evil-in-innocence…”
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>>>> (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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>>>> ******
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>>>> And in a total discontinuance from the narrative although apparently in response to it:
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>>>> (“Uncle, Uncle!”… )  etc.
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>>>> 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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>>>> *********
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>>>> Becky
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>>>> -
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>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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