M&D Chapter 12 - pages 118-119

[alice malice]

M&D is a very funny, very witty, and clever, and amusing, and at
times, hilarious book. It may seem a stretch but I think these few
pages make  a statement about the power of laughter. The allegorical
sculpture of Awkwardness, erected and sustained by class and wit, and
by twisting of facial muscles, is toppled by pure laughter, by a
democratic and evolving solidarity, one that develops when
institutions are beset by the madness of crowds and when  social
norms, the targets of satire, collapse. Or when one goes to America.

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 12:27 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
> 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