M&D Chapter 12 - pages 118-119

Wed Feb 25 15:41:45 CST 2015

JS> Perhaps a little anachronism here, again?

That's how I read it, too, although the prime-number handwaving helps it to
slip by.

Not that Maskelyne gives the impression of EVER having been very
trustworthy.            .

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 3:42 PM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I mean, wasn't it some fellow-countryman of Yours who coined the phrase
> "trust nobody over 30"? I inhaled it all the way when I was in San
> Francisco in the summer of '72 – I was only 24 and thought I would never be
> that old (take in sail).
>
> Perhaps a little anachronism here, again?
>
> 2015-02-25 21:16 GMT+01:00 Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>:
>
>> Omg!  How funny and interesting!
>>
>> Way back in the olden days,  when I was about to turn 30,  I decided to
>> give myself a “last-day-of-29” party.  I loved the idea and probably would
>> have done it had I considered that this was the last day of “prime” of life
>> (at least until I was 31).  Alas,  my birthday is very shortly after New
>> Year's and I was all partied out.
>>
>> Becky
>>
>> > On Feb 25, 2015, at 10:39 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>> >
>> > I absolutely love this passage, and it reminds me of another of my
>> favorites, similarly anthropomorphizing math/science: Janff in GR,
>> complaining that covalent bonds are too wimpy - they share elections, where
>> ionic bonds seize them.
>> >
>> > Laura
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> >
>> > From: jochen stremmel
>> >
>> > Sent: Feb 25, 2015 1:17 PM
>> >
>> > To: Becky Lindroos
>> >
>> > Cc: pynchon -l
>> >
>> > Subject: Re: M&D Chapter 12 - pages 118-119
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> Mason:  (but 30 is)  “… a Number divisible,- penetrable! - by 6
>> numbers!”    (eeks?  why?  - numerology of some kind I guess.)<
>> >
>> > You mean still Maskelyne, with the Apostrophes,and what he means with
>> Prime is a pun, or homonym, because 29 is a prime number (only divisible by
>> 1 and itself) and at the same time styled by him as "Prime of Life", while
>> "the dread Thirty" is a Number divisible by six others – three of them
>> primes themselves: 2, 3, 5 – and the others: 6, 10, 15. Quite a complaint
>> by someone who loves to calculate. (But perhaps you knew all this already
>> ... sorry, then.)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > 2015-02-25 18:27 GMT+01:00 Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>:
>> > Another day,  another couple pages:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Maskalyne likens St. Helena to a gothic novel and says
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > "Six months I’ve been here - too many idle Minutes soon pile up, topple
>> and overwhelm the Healthiest Mind.”
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > (A little foreshadowing there? -  Suspicions that Mason might go
>> completely mad?  Pynchon doesn’t really go in for a lot of foreshadowing to
>> keep up suspense or whatever - just as well,  it would take the whole thing
>> overboard, overdone, too much.)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ** “Sirius Business,” cackles the Proprietor. -  another groaner gag.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > This novel has some very serious themes, but told with a LOT of humor -
>> not just humor to lighten the atmosphere -there’s actually a comic tone.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > "But I also noticed that the book’s  (M&D’s) humor was more thoroughly
>> interwoven with melancholy and a sense of mortality than ever before in
>> Pynchon's work."
>> >
>> > http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/pschmid1/essays/pynchon/mason.html
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > "Mason & Dixon represents an impulse to write history through the
>> imaginary field, to crosshatch its narrative with a realization of
>> culture's desire to find its identity in the realm of the imagination. It
>> thus argues, implicitly, for the importance of artistic imagination
>> alongside scientific and historical work. Pynchon rejects the harsh realism
>> and more cynical parodies employed by many contemporary authors, using
>> HUMOR (my caps)  and even magic as modes of transformation.[17] Talking
>> dogs, sexually aroused mechanical ducks, and nighttime apparitions and
>> ghosts haunt Mason and Dixon in America; perhaps the country that combines
>> technical invention with capitalistic enterprise might be equallymythologic
>> in Pynchon's ambivalent history."
>> >
>> > http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.903/14.1burns.html
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Thoughts on the humor and how it adds to the mix of history, themes,
>> story, whatever -  do you laugh? Why?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > **********
>> >
>> > And then, ta-da - it’s Maskelyne’s birthday - (which would tell us it’s
>> October 6, 1761 and that he’s 29 years old - born Oct. 1732) and he makes a
>> big deal of impending doom (age 30 is coming).
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > The phrase "Stygian mists”  is from "To Chloris”  in "Madrigals and
>> Epigrams” by William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649) Scottish poet.   a
>> little chunk of the poem -  http://www.bartleby.com/337/285.html
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Mason:  (but 30 is)  “… a Number divisible,- penetrable! - by 6
>> numbers!”    (eeks?  why?  - numerology of some kind I guess.)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ***  Narrator:    “...dismal apostrophes...”    -
>> >
>> > And in this case the word apostrophe means exclamations,  not the
>> punctuation symbol.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > **** Now Dixon is leaving for South Africa to take care of Maskelyne’s
>> "Sisson instrument”  which is probably a quadrant of some sort,  a device
>> for measuring angles.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Sisson
>> >
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodolite
>> >
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrant_(instrument)
>> >
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mural_instrument
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >        If the measurement device is off by a hair - then that slight
>> error is multiplied exponentially and Maskelyne has invested more than time
>> and his career in the instrument ($$?) .  Dixon is the field rep for Johnny
>> Bird’s instruments?  - lol - but …
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bird_(astronomer)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Why are the various measurements of time and space inaccurate?   Errors
>> in measurement - 1.  human error - the time of the Transit (because M&D
>> started/ stopped at different places) and, 2.  device error (plumb line
>> screwed up on quadrant).
>> >
>> > **********
>> >
>> > Is there really so little on these two pages?    Or is this “so little?”
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > So here’s an added little morsel for the Learn’d Dogs amongst us -
>> James Wood, in a now “classic” essay soundly criticized Zadie Smith’s White
>> Teeth for it’s “hysterical realism” and lambasted a few others in the
>> process (M&D, etc).
>> >
>> > http://www.newrepublic.com/article/61361/human-all-too-inhuman
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > And this is a rather interesting little Wiki article on the subject:
>> >
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterical_realism
>> >
>> > (interesting little piece)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Becky
>> >
>> > the humor bit reminded me of hysterical and that took me on the little
>> semi-side trip to Wood and Wiki -
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > -
>> >
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>>
>
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