M & D Deep Duck Read. Pop quiz

Tue Jan 6 16:04:28 CST 2015

Monte,

I think, actually, as my under-three grandson is always saying, as if
he knows Appearance from Reality (already)!, I think
I got refuted with the selection bias argument on one of the Plist
discussions, so I hope I learned something. In my own midn,
I think I did and have had it in mind since. (no guarantee I don't
fall down though).

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 10:55 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> MK>...but haven't we all felt that so much that happens in American society,
> in its movies, etc. is........juvenile in its
> appeal?
>
> Yes, but at least some of that comes from seeing it all. This American tends
> to see only the most acclaimed Swedish and Japanese movies, read only the
> most acclaimed Nigerian and Pakistani books -- not the far more numerous,
> run-of-the-mill offerings that are, I'm sure, the despair of elite Swedish,
> Japanese, Nigerian and Pakistani cultural consumers.
>
> The selection effect works in time as well as space. Many laments about mass
> culture, about the decline of art and taste since [insert Golden Age here],
> tell us only that educated people have encountered the classics surviving --
> by definition --  from earlier eras, not the clunkers everyone has
> forgotten. As you know better than I, Mark, the best-seller lists -- and
> even the high-culture award lists -- of bygone times yield many WTF?!?
> moments.
>
> Maybe most of most cultures everywhere and everywhen is "juvenile" because
> "mature" -- aka elite -- culture requires both the opportunity and the
> desire to continue exploration, education (institutional or autodidactic),
> and reflection beyond adolescence.
>
> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 7:25 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Wonderfullll!....psychometrist, a devolution?--Pynchon's usual way
>> with descendants--from storyteller of adolescent psychology.
>>
>> Which leads me to THIS: The Rev is telling this story to entertain three
>> kids!
>> (He must or they will stop him). So, an exciting plot-drive story.
>> full of 'Crimes!" shout the boys.
>> Wanting their Youthful conceptions---their
>> stereotypes--"Frenchwomen!", their boyish, uneducated (much)
>> desires and lusts.......slated.
>>
>> I, for one, have long thought America as a generalized sensibility, is
>> adolescent in essence. (Real cultural commentators
>> have made this point, from whom I've got it, of course, but haven't we
>> all felt that so much that happens in
>> American society, in its movies, etc. is........juvenile in its
>> appeal?) I suggest TRP is putting that down as
>> well.
>>
>>
>> So, I am reminded of the adventure stories that are The Chums of
>> Chance's adventures. Special Operations Executive...an
>> echo---foreecho?--of the Special Operations of the Chums?
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 5:59 AM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>
>> wrote:
>> > According to Joakim Sigvardson <<(t)he Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke is
>> > possibly
>> > a forefather of Ronald Cherrycoke (...) in (GR). The latter is a <<noted
>> > psychometrist>> (p. 146), a spiritual medium employed by the
>> > Psychological
>> > Intelligence Schemes for Expecting Surrender at the White Visitation,
>> > (...) on
>> > the coast of Southern England. The White Visitation was formerly a
>> > mental
>> > hospital but when Ronald Cherrycoke and PISCES inhabit it during the
>> > (WWII),
>> > it is part of the Special Operations Executive."
>> >
>> > Source: Immanence and Trenscendence in Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon,
>> > published by Stockholm University, 2002, p. 81.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Also, could the 'omnipresent narrator' be Tenebrae somehow?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > 6. jan. 2015 kl. 02.35 skrev John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>:
>> >
>> > Ooops, reply all.
>> >
>> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> > From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
>> > Date: Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 12:35 PM
>> > Subject: Re: M & D Deep Duck Read. Pop quiz
>> > To: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> >
>> >
>> > I always thought it was Roland. Huh.
>> >
>> > Shades of Ronald McDonald mixed in with Coca-Cola? Hardly positive
>> > associations in a P novel.
>> >
>> > One is ostensibly a man of God, another a man of medicine, but unless
>> > I'm mistaken neither is particularly faithful to their role. They're
>> > both kind of hucksters, kind of woo woo, kind of jokers, right?
>> >
>> > Although inspired by the discussion of wood in the first chapter,
>> > maybe the coke in Cherrycoke could be read as the combustible fuel
>> > coke. So it's like cherry tree wood used for burning purposes. A slow
>> > burning wood according to the great lord google.
>> >
>> > Goes with Wicks and also Tenebrae (and I swear I went down a
>> > rabbit-hole during my first read regarding names and light-sources in
>> > M&D).
>> >
>> > On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > what is the relation of Rev Cherrycoke to Ronald in GR?, that is why
>> > did P echo the name? Cherrycoke, Ronald
>> >
>> > 125; psychometrist in Psi Section; 146; "undertakes. . .trips into
>> > Nora Dodson-Truck's void, " 150; "in a Jesus Christ getup" 639
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 4:36 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hello back, David! That dovetails with my view that Cherrycoke is
>> > Pynchon's
>> > stand-in - Pynchon once young, wayward and reclusive, now that nigh many
>> > years have come and gone, drawn inward to the family hearth to tell
>> > stories.
>> > Not that different from what he's doing (as omniscient narrator)in
>> > Inherent
>> > Vice - telling stories of his youth from the new perspective of family
>> > man.
>> >
>> > Laura
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> >
>> > From: David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net>
>> > Sent: Jan 5, 2015 4:01 PM
>> > To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> > Cc: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> > Subject: Re: M & D Deep Duck Read. Pop quiz
>> >
>> > Hello,
>> > Thanks for setting up this group reading.  This will be my second
>> > reading of
>> > M-&D- (my first was when it came out) but my first time publicly
>> > discussing
>> > it (or any Pynchon book, for that matter...), so I beg your pardon in
>> > advance for my hamfistedness.
>> > I was wondering about the Cherrycoke frame as well.  Are there other
>> > Pynchon
>> > books that start this way, looking back from a comfortable future?  I
>> > can't
>> > think of one.
>> > If  Cherrycoke is a stand-in for Mr. Pynchon, could the framing have
>> > something to do with the idea I've read (eavesdropped) here, that
>> > Pynchon
>> > started M-&D- many years earlier, set it aside to do other things
>> > (Vineland?), and returned to it later from a different place in a
>> > different
>> > America?  In M-&D-, there's the twenty year span from the tale (1766) to
>> > the
>> > telling (1786).  It seems to me that those years fairly well match with
>> > the
>> > twenty years Rip Van Winkle slept; also roughly the years from Gravity's
>> > Rainbow to M-&D- (...when we all slept?).  I'm not sure how fruitful it
>> > is
>> > to draw too many autobiographic connections, especially when there's so
>> > much
>> > rich stuff to dig around in here, but I figure I'd throw it out there.
>> >
>> > On Jan 5, 2015, at 10:54 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> >
>> > A + +
>> >
>> > Why did he not have Cherrycoke tell it all, ya think? and.... that old
>> > modernist staple [started with The Good Soldier] of
>> > ye unreliable narrator......wha?
>> >
>> > p. 8 "stoven, dismasted, imbecile with age---an untrustworthy
>> > Remembrancer [see---all on the surface]
>> > for whom the few events yet rattling within a broken mamory must
>> > provide the only comfort no remaining to him,---
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 1:27 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > All I see is the Omniscient Narrator handing off to Cherrycoke here. Are
>> > you
>> > talking about the book as a whole, or just this section?
>> >
>> > Cherrycoke is a stand-in for Pynchon himself, perhaps? Family outcast,
>> > paid
>> > money to keep away? Well, no. But famous reclusive, one-time writer of
>> > something labeled "obscene," long-time bachelor, no real job other than
>> > being a highly-paid (relative to most working drones) writer, now
>> > ensconced
>> > solidly within a family setting and telling a tale.
>> >
>> > LK
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> >
>> > From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> > Sent: Jan 5, 2015 1:00 PM
>> > To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> > Subject: M & D Deep Duck Read. Pop quiz
>> >
>> > Who is narrating?, or should that be Who are narrating?
>> >
>> > And what does that imply, maybe, in various ways, about the tale?
>> >
>> > 25 words or fewer..
>> > -
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