M&D - Chapter 11 pp 109-110
Elisabeth Romberg
eromberg at mac.com
Tue Feb 24 15:44:09 CST 2015
Beautiful way to describe her presence in the book so far Becky. Also what Laura said about her being quick witted. She is a funny one. A character to watch for sure.
I'm not sure if I remember where the story goes with her so that's definitely something to look forward to!
Sendt fra min iPhone
> Den 24. feb. 2015 kl. 22.28 skrev Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>:
>
> Agreed - her comment in the quote you cited is complex - but there’s not enough about her yet to make her “rounded.” She’s simply not quite any kind of stereotype I can think of - Her comment is like the single Chinese brushstroke which makes the bird in a painting seem to fly.
>
> Becky
>
>> On Feb 24, 2015, at 12:57 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>>
>> Tenebrae strikes me as a young woman of some depth, smart and sarcastic. Cousin Ethelmer might send her heart aflutter, but she's nowhere close to worshipping him.
>>
>> [p. 106]:
>>
>> "'What's the mystery?' Ethelmer shrugs. 'Didn't Days take twenty-four Hours to pass, as they do now?'"
>>
>> Brae peers thro' the candle-light. 'Why Coz, how interesting.'"
>>
>> Laura
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>
>>
>>>
>>> Mark asks,
>>>> 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...?
>>>
>>> One of my minor interests in rereading M&D is to come to some kind of idea (not conclusion) of how Pynchon is treating women here - NOT in all his books as I sense a big change between Slow Learner and Bleeding Edge.
>>>
>>> Yes, (tentatively) in M&D so far the women seem pretty much to be “Venuses,” diversions, sex interests. But I think this might change when we come to Rebekah in a couple chapters and I can’t remember much about Martha Washington and a few other women later on. I think it’s really too early to tell about generalizations. (That’s true of other generalizations, too.)
>>>
>>> Besides, to this point, all the minor characters, obviously NOT Mason & Dixon, are rather flattish, based on stereotypes, sometimes funny creatures, caricatures, etc. And so far they are different kinds of women even if a common use of them is for sex and diversion.
>>>
>>> We have the gorgeous and ambitious floozy (Florinda), and uppity white women (the Vroom ladies), a great slave woman (Austra) who apparently has some choice about which "white sprig” to use to gain a child. (Johanna can’t very well command one of them - heh.) Tenabræ (young flirt?) is a puzzle, but there is a sexual connotation hiding behind kissing cousins bit, to say nothing of the flaring nostrils. And Euphrenia, (old flirt- or suggestive old lady) although she is musical, claims to have a "past,” having lived in the Sultan’s harem chambers, etc.
>>>
>>> Fwiw, I have no general problem with an author using women for sexual diversions in some books - there can be a lot of variety there and that may work within a theme. Or it may be true of the times - the So Cal beach scene in the 1970s (but that’s the theme, so … )?
>>>
>>> Becky
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Feb 24, 2015, at 4:03 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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