M&D Chapter 12 - pages 118-119
jochen stremmel
jstremmel at gmail.com
Thu Feb 26 04:09:28 CST 2015
Yes, Becky, thank you, too. I stayed a week at Mill Valley then, visited
Stinson Beach, but smoked my first joint south of the border in Guaymas
where two years before the airfield scenes for Catch 22 were shot. Ah yes,
and I saw The Godfather in July '72 in LA, where 3 big cinemas were still
sold out 4 months after the premiere and we only got tickets because the
husband of my friend's aunt was with the fire department and in charge of
the controls of emergency exits in the city's cinemas and discos. He never
paid for a beer or anything when he showed us around.
2015-02-26 8:07 GMT+01:00 Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>:
> Yes, I have a couple of stories left (this was a long time ago and the
> memories are not terribly exciting ones.
>
> I had visited at Spring Break ’67 with a couple girlfriends and San
> Francisco was very nice, gentle - music in the stairwells, some drugs, but
> that wasn’t the basic thing. The good stuff was that semester, January -
> June?
>
> Another girlfriend and I moved up there in June after school was out - we
> got a little apartment, but I don’t remember which street - not ON the
> Haight, but about 6 blocks away (we weren’t interested in doing a real
> “hippie” thing - she was starting beauty college and I was on vacation.)
> There was a club on Haight I spent some time at - they had chess players
> in the bay windows and improv jazz on stage - (across from the butcher shop
> if I remember correctly). I heard about the “diggers” and some bands at
> the Fillmore, but I wasn’t involved that much - wasn’t interested in the
> drugs but I liked the music. I also enjoyed traveling around on the cable
> car down Powell street and going to the City Lights bookstore and eating
> the fresh produce from these stands.
>
> Then the summer people came, kids, tourists, pan-handlers, creeps,
> crazies, etc. By August these folks had pretty well taken over with long,
> long lines of cars traveling through the Haight at a crawl - it was just a
> tourist place. Sp they/we (?) held a funeral for the hippies in the park
> and someone told everyone to spread the word and a lot of people went to
> the communes in the north (Morningstar in Marin I think). I stayed
> awhile longer but not much. - it got a bit scary.
>
> Where the people on the street had been carrying mannequin legs around in
> May, in Aug or Sept there was a guy carrying a real person’s leg - gross -
> creeped me out. There were a couple of drug murders with bodies turning up
> in the bay. This was when Manson was collecting his girls I think.
> Meanwhile, my folks were getting concerned about me and my friend seemed
> to be doing well (she met some guy) -so I left - went back home (about 250
> miles south).
>
> Back home … before too long I married a guy I’d dated in high school who
> had gone to Berkeley and then into the Navy. We would drive up to the Bay
> Area and visit friends in Berkeley and travel through Haight - went to a
> couple of Golden Gate marches. Haight was a total disaster by then -
> strange hooded creatures wandering around lost. Only a few shops left
> open (NOT my jazz place and not the butcher shop) and a clinic. Very,
> very sad. We went back to Berkeley several times but not to the Haight
> for many years.
>
> Becky
> this has been darned near 50 years ago! Oh I do sometimes miss my memory
> -
>
>
>
> > On Feb 25, 2015, at 8:26 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Becky,
> >
> > You were of age in the hottest spot on the western planet in decades,
> even since. Lucky you. Do you have stories of your own history to tell?
> Where were you in spirit then?
> >
> > I was 10 years younger living in Reston, VA, outside DC, but I did my
> best to catch up with your generation. Acid, then weed, at 13 in '71.
> Peace marches just before the end. I saw the draft comming for me long
> before I was 18. Thank Jeebus I was spared that.
> >
> > David Morris
> >
> > On Wednesday, February 25, 2015, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>
> wrote:
> > Ach - I know! I was in San Francisco in 1967 at the age of 19 (that’ll
> date me - but it’s about your age, too). When I was 19 the age of 30
> looked eons away - could not believe I’d ever be that old, or what it
> would be like, etc.
> >
> > In the days of Mason & Dixon (and Maskelyne) the life expectancy of
> males was only about 36.9 years! (Several sites use about this number but
> I can’t find a source.)
> > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davidjstokes/1750.htm
> > Many of those deaths were in the lower classes - with rough labor and
> wars, lack of sanitary conditions, nutrition, (light in the case of
> London). That said, Mason died at the ripe old age of 54 and Dixon at
> only 47. Maskelyne, otoh, lived to the age of 78!
> >
> > The predictions for Maskelyne’s upcoming year were rather interesting,
> but he didn’t marry until he was 53 years old!
> >
> > Becky
> >
> > > On Feb 25, 2015, at 12:42 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
> > >
> > >
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
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