M&D - Chapter 11 pp 109-110

Wed Feb 25 12:35:14 CST 2015

TV first started broadcasting when Pynchon was around 10 years old, and even during his teenaged year, up through his college/navy years, the pickings were slim.

Here's a breakdown of the most popular shows of the 50s:

http://www.retrowaste.com/1950s/tv-shows-in-the-1950s/

He was older than Maskeleyne when Hawaii 5-0 and the Brady Bunch came out.

So the pop culture he absorbed in his formative years came from movies and radio. He purportedly watched a lot of TV when in his 30s (according to his sister, I think, in some interview?), and it's obviously a huge influence in Vineland. The ditties in M&D do seem to be more vaudeville inspired.

Laura

-----Original Message-----

From: Monte Davis 

Sent: Feb 25, 2015 12:50 PM

To: Johnny Marr 

Cc: Becky Lindroos , pynchon -l 

Subject: Re: M&D - Chapter 11 pp 109-110

I think while growing up he absorbed a lot of movie musicals and cartoons (most of which were musical back in the day). Add in comics, advertising jingles, TV shows, the IV playlist etc -- he makes pop culture, whether Soul Gidget or The Ghastly Fop, as revealing as anything in Big Official History. 
On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 12:06 PM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, February 22, 2015, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote

*** 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?

Pynchon is a polphonic narrator. He loves writing in all its many guises, including Tin Pan Alley or Gilbert and Sullivan songwriting.
The songs do appeal to his 'zany' sense of humour, although a more generous commentator might suggest they showcase his musicality and his ease with unusual rhymes.
It's been said that Shakespeare's short sentences and epigrams contain all the essential action and themes of his plays - the longer passages provide the theoretical digressions. Perhaps Pynchon's ditties provide an opportunity to succinctly summarise the latest characters and plot developments (although from memory a lot of the ditties do seem to arise from tangential details) ...

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

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