M&D new question

[Mark Kohut]

"The map is not the [English] territory."

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 12:09 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> "The map is not the territory."
>
> Isn't this statement more meaningless than the map?  No one ever tried to
> build a house on a map.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:03 AM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I read the book like a year and a half ago and haven't yet picked it up
>> for this group read (in fact may not) but to call it meaningless seems to me
>> a totally believably human response, from Cherrycoke in particular.
>> Exercising a little empathy, if great lengths were gone to in the name of
>> drawing a boundary on the earth (especially if I am, in title and
>> inclination, a man of a more, how you say, cosmic scope), it might strike me
>> as being inherently meaningless. TRP is always trafficking in the
>> relationship between the seen and un-, the real and un- and sur-, if I read
>> him right. What's that old line about the relationship between reality and
>> perception?
>>
>> "The map is not the territory." Doesn't this show up in Inherent Vice? Or
>> there's at least a nod to it and: "The word is not the thing."
>>
>> It seems to me the conventional way to interpret and feel this concept is
>> meaning that the systems we use to categorize and perceive and understand
>> the physical world are just that and/but are not themselves the world. It
>> seems to me that, to occupy the world in real time as a boundary is being
>> drawn would only magnify the disparity between the map and the territory.
>>
>> And that map/territory inequality works in two directions. A) The map is
>> insufficient to render/evoke/explain the territory because the territory is
>> of course exponentially vaster and more complicated and more real,
>> containing things the map could not possibly capture. B) The map is actually
>> not just insufficient but in some ways excessive, containing things that the
>> territory does not (and not just vice versa), boundaries among them.
>>
>> Also, I don't remember every nuance of Cherrycoke's character and
>> temperament and inclination, but in technical designation at least he does
>> have some relationship to an extraterrestrial/trans-human realm (excuse the
>> imprecision here; typing kind of fast). So I would maybe suggest there is
>> some caution to be exercised in not confusing influence/impact with import.
>> Yes the line is enormously impactful in the scope of human affairs, but
>> that, maybe to someone like the Rev espesh, does not necessarily mean it
>> means, if that makes sense.
>>
>> And actually if I can try to sort of imagine myself occupying his mind and
>> experience a bit, I believe that 'meaningless' reaction even more. Like,
>> Cherrycoke saw firsthand the consequences of the drawing of the line, the
>> impact of that whole enterprise. I would say that, for some people with a
>> more cosmic or long-range bent, certain seemingly seminal moments in human
>> history (especially since those moments tend disproportionately to the
>> bloody) exhibit an inversely proportional relationship between human impact
>> and trans-human meaning. That is, the more lives lost as the result of
>> something, the more meaningless it then seems or feels (not saying this is
>> true, but I understand this response). (I couldn't point you anywhere too
>> specific but Tolstoy for one (TRP for two? I probably shouldn't say that)
>> seems to endorse the idea that what we understand as the most important
>> moments of human history are rarely that; history exists not in grand events
>> but tiny alterations of human consciousness.)
>>
>> Also, think about yourself living in one country, watching
>> extra-terrestrial boundaries be drawn on it, watching it go through a war
>> for independence, some might call it a civil war, then watching life
>> basically go back to normal with normal everyday problems continuing
>> unabated or at least not greatly altered (to say nothing of them being
>> solved) by that war (an event that would seem to be indisputably
>> meaningful)--doesn't it make sense to think that that imaginary line you
>> witnessed the drawing of so many years before does not actually contain any
>> innate meaning? Or at least to feel that way?
>>
>> I dunno. Forgive if me if I've got some history or some details of the
>> book wrong--I probably shouldn't comment without reading it alongside you
>> people.
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:29 AM, Mark Wright <washoepete at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> A line that situates the "speaker" Rev'd Cherrycoke in his moment. The
>>> un-named boundary they inscribed upon the earth was "meaningless," but the
>>> _named_ boundary, the Mason-Dixon Line, bears a tottering superstructure of
>>> meaning in history.
>>>
>>> Maybe M&D is the story of all the snarled lines, the tarry fixed lines
>>> and yellow manilla running lines of rigging that entangled Mason and Dixon
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, January 13, 2015, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> No thoughts? dumb question?
>>>> On Jan 12, 2015, at 12:36 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > All the questions have been provocative, so I hope this won't be a
>>>> > complete dud.
>>>> >
>>>> > One question/observation that jumped out at me in the introduction is
>>>> > the word meaningless to describe the completed M&D line in Cherrycokes
>>>> > introduction to the Mason Dixon story. It did not strike me on the first
>>>> > read how boldly the writer seems to be characterizing the endeavor at the
>>>> > very opening of the work. He seems himself to be drawing a line or at the
>>>> > very least posing a deep question about everything implied by that line. Was
>>>> > anyone else surprised at how early this question is set forth, or am I
>>>> > treading into the obvious?
>>>> >
>>>> > Even the word meaningless is provocative- both historically and
>>>> > metaphorically an odd choice to characterize something with such import. But
>>>> > it fits with Cherrycoke's probable attitude at this time. I don't know if I
>>>> > can defend that; I just feel it.-
>>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l