M&D - Chapter 11 pp 109-110

[Monte Davis]

Allz I'm sayin is. these "out of character" glimpses of the
recently-bereaved Mason are the white dot within the black, the black dot
within the white <http://f.tqn.com/y/taoism/1/S/0/-/-/-/yinYang.gif>, a
nudge towards balancing of humors, or perhaps enantiodromia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiodromia>. I realized this time through
that they had entirely dropped out of my image of Mason, but that won't
happen again.

It's also worth noticing that death-obsessed Chas married twice and
fathered eight children in all, while lively Jere died a bachelor and (as
far as we know) childless. Odd, that, if character is destiny,

On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 7:03 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Whether Wicks or that 'other' narrator, my take is that Pynchon wanted
> to 'deepen' Mason's character with this Gothic death-love dimension of
> his grief. He hit it hard; pushed it, as is his wont, to an extreme;
> this scene comes close to one of the 'obscene ones in GR, I reckon.
> Grief for a loved one can make us feel 'half in love with easeful
> death'. Pynchon wanted to link such death love with the Puritan
> character, I suggest, with the Death drive as part of the attitudes to
> living that Mason & Dixon embody as they embody the range of a
> society, the society of the time and the US of A on the way---and to
> the present  in that parallax scope.
>
> And he brings in another life-loving woman(?) who gets a little wet
> thinking of the possible erections of the hanged and just brings that
> up with Mason, who gets chatted up a lot better at the hanging than he
> chats up.....exercising her female flirtatiousness.....
>
> Women in this book are all "like' Venuses..are just about all of them
> inciting sexual responses all the time, yes? More male fantasies of
> history, or any time, anywhere, I think the tale-telling set up clues
> us to. "French Women!"...Then there is Tenebrae.
> A pynchonian level that 'sez', women do want love...?
>
> As with metempsychosis, another Ulysses homage?
> -- There's one thing it hasn't a deterrent effect on, says Alf.
>
> -- What's that? says Joe.
>
> -- The poor bugger's tool that's being hanged, says Alf.
>
> -- That so? says Joe.
>
> -- God's truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in
> Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when
> they cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces
> like a poker.
>
> -- Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said.
>
> -- That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It's only a natural
> phenomenon, don't you see, because on account of the...
>
> And then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and science
> and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon.
>
> The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft
> tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous
> fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the
> spinal cord would, according to the best approved traditions of
> medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human
> subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres, causing
> the pores of the cobra cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to
> instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human
> anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon
> which has been dominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards
> philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 3:41 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 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
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >>
> >> From: jochen stremmel
> >>
> >> Sent: Feb 23, 2015 12:33 PM
> >>
> >> To: Becky Lindroos
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 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:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I read the "Uncle, Uncle!" interjection as a sign that Cherrycoke had
> >> lapsed into silent revery (or fantasy) about topics inappropriate for
> his
> >> audience.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 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?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Laura
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 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).
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -----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 -
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ***********
> >>
> >>
> >> "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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ****
> >>
> >>
> >> 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? -
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ******
> >>
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> *********
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Becky
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -
> >>
> >>
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -
> >>
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>
> >>
> >
>
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